Islands
by Tom Sumner
Summary: Direct sequel. Completed.
1. Mirage

CHAPTER ONE

_Mirage_

THE BOY WITH fair hair opened his one good eye. At first all he could discern through the blurry film left by his lid was a spot of light, a lone white star against black, some way off from his buzzing body. He tried to calculate its distance but could not: the speck was either a few metres away or on the other side of the galaxy. Stolidly he stared at the star.

After a while other specks appeared on either side of the first light, blinking into existence one by one on a new horizon. Somehow their nature seemed intrinsically unknowable, and it occurred to the boy to distinguish instead the blackness around them. He knew that one cannot breathe in space, so it must be the night sky he was staring into. Then why was he not cold? The boy could feel subtle yet distinct currents of warm air exhaling onto his face in uneven thresholds. Slowly he remembered his origins.

This was not the thicket. There were no rough branches or tickling fronds surrounding him now. He tried to recall his journey from that space to his current location, but the blackness was uncommunicative; nature was not going to help him with prickly associations. His brain was blank. All was silent and neutral about him.

He closed the good eye again and concentrated on his physical circumstance. Lying on his back with his head tilted slightly to the right, he noted a dry, soft pressure on his tailbone and behind his shoulder blades, yet whatever was under his body was still too hard to be a bed. His head was propped up by a mound of something furry.

Remembering his other faculties, the boy took his breathing off autopilot to inhale by himself as deeply as he could. Instantly shards of pain struck inside his lungs, and he paused the action before slowly allowing the air out again. One of his nostrils was clogged up, but the autopilot resumed as he turned his attention to his tingling limbs. His left hand was resting on his stomach, with the right lying parallel with helpless legs. His feet and chest were bare, but damp fabric clung to the front of his thighs.

His mind drifted into unconsciousness again, and imperceptible time went by. During this stretch of slumber he thought he heard rustling by his face, and could almost make out particular words spoken high up, in every direction. Did he perceive traces of humour, compassion, scorn? Through these deep, nebulous impressions perhaps he himself spoke too, though what he uttered, and whether anyone responded, was not ascertained. Finally even the nightmares subsided, and his mind cleared itself of all notions entirely. Darkness fell upon darkness.

THE BOY WITH with red hair stood silhouetted against a navy expanse of evening sky. Dressed only in ragged shorts dyed brown by earth and blood, he held a straight wooden spear by his side and looked out at the trembling ocean. His mind too was blank, but unencumbered by mystery and fear; his face showed no emotion, though his countenance was always hard to gauge through the smears of plant and animal juice.

Tonight a thick black line ran from ear to ear up over the bridge of his nose; the forehead was daubed red and the chin white. His body, supple yet ossified by the elements, was filthy, streaked all over by grazes, pigments and sweat, and in some areas his own wounds were receptive to the fresh blood of other creatures. Earth had worked itself into every pore. His natural complexion had vanished.

He turned from the vast horizon and looked down to his right, over a short isthmus of rock at the straggled entrance to a forest. A little beyond, the growth became verdant and evenly distributed, but farther away black patches sullied the landscape. Here and there dark smoke crept between trunks living and dead, and the whole forest had been exhausted by heavy rainfall.

The boy thought dimly of a distant beach fire extinguished by a torrid thunderstorm, and moved his head upward to dislodge the memory. A mile away, adjacent to the rocky peninsular on which he stood, sat a mountain, an imposing crimson pyramid in the faltering light. The boy stared at it unblinkingly, then stepped from his rock and clambered down, back towards society. In the distance the sun burned orange, became obscured by impatient streaks of dark cloud, then finally relented to night and the boy's retirement.

WHEN HE OPENED his eyes again, the fair-haired boy saw no light at all. He was completely surrounded by black. In contrast to his earlier awakence, however, now he could hear noises: quiet yet heavy breathing. The inhalations were rhythmic, and after listening intently the boy guessed that there were at least five people sleeping around him. The paralysis of the daytime – if it had been the daytime – was succeeded now by a conscious tensing of his muscles. If he got up he might stir the sleepers, but if he waited what would become of him?

He realised his fear and traced its origins. Before, his mind had been free of cognition, intellect; now he remembered faces and events. He remembered the beach, the pool, the long scar plunging deep into the forest. What had happened between the thicket and the darkness was still enigmatic, but the earlier history of his time on the island was growing clearer in his mind. His brain was imposing dissonances on him, and the boy fought to form a narrative. In need of context, he was reaching out into the blackness for stars of understanding.

Suddenly one blinked into existence: the solitary figure on the rock, with one arm hovering over the lever. Then another memory of the same shadow, pushing its weight down and unleashing the monstrous boulder. The tumbling, unstoppable cascade down the ledge, the litter of smaller stones, the little monsters, the strike, the fall into the boiling water… The fair-haired boy was open-mouthed from the growing frenzy in his stomach, and as his memories coalesced, his physical sensations become torturously specific: the wound in his side burned; the bloated swell beneath one eye ringed with dying blood. He moaned the name of his stolen friend out loud – then stopped.

A dim light had made him open the good eye. Now the blackness was home to a flickering orange diamond four feet up in the air. The fair-haired boy sat up, his back and palms immediately aching, and looked at what the light was illuminating. The red-headed boy stared back at him, his face and shoulders all that were visible. Still expressionless, he stood looking down at the emaciated blond at his feet, then finally parted his cracked lips and spoke lowly.

'Hello, Ralph.'

More sensations made themselves known to the recumbent figure: his ankles itched and his tongue felt heavy and swollen in his dry mouth. He salivated then murmured back at the standing boy.

'Jack…'

They remained in the same position for a while longer, the prisoner and the visitor, then the standing boy broke his gaze and retreated into the black, killing the flame with a bare hand. The boy named Ralph paused a while longer, then gave in to the pulses of pain around his body, his throbbing mind, and reclined again on the soft, hard ground.

NOW IT WAS day, in a glorious, extravagant summer. Ralph clutched towels around his shoulders and traversed the promenade deck of a gliding, silver cruiser. His filthy shorts were gone and now he wore clean slacks, a little too large, and a blue sweater. A sunny breeze blew through his washed hair as he looked up at the stacks of tiered bridges and the conning tower – a formal version of the ridged peninsula on the island – and ahead of them guns protruded out to sea and made him feel protected, even powerful. The other survivors had gone, but he was not worried about them – nor was he impatient to get home, for somewhere in the deep maze of this ship was his father.

What was taking him so long?

SUNLIGHT FILTERED FROM his dream into reality: yellow-white beams were streaming in through the oblong entrance to the cave. Ralph opened his eyes to the glare. He was on his side now, his right arm stricken by pins and needles, and he sat up carefully to examine the state of his body. The dull twinges continued in his limbs and the side of his stomach where the wound had been inflicted, but his brain was relaxed from deep sleep, his mind clearer now. Around him lay heaps of flattered fern and vitiated animal skin. The sleepers had vanished.

Ralph tried to open his bad eye but its vision was blurred. Wincing and grimacing, he got to his feet gingerly and slouched to the entrance. In front of him was a sheet of rock tilting upwards, and somewhere below and beyond that lay the neck, the forest, the mountain. The sun shone blithely down on his shoulders and made him shiver. He was alone for half a minute, then a voice called down from behind him.

'Morning.'

Ralph turned and looked up. A figure in shorts was sitting with a spear higher up on the rock, the bottom of which formed the jagged ceiling of the cave. The guard was silhouetted against the bright blue sky, and as Ralph's eyes were still growing accustomed to the sun glare, its identity remained nonchalantly mysterious for another half minute, though Ralph knew who he was _not_.

'Where's Jack?' he mumbled, his sight and hearing improving a little.

The figure remained motionless. 'Gone hunting,' it said. 'Won't be back for an hour. You look awful.'

The glare was fading from Ralph's eyes. Now he saw who the figure was: Roger, Jack's partner in crime. Presumably he had been stationed here thanks to his violent devotion to the leader. Ralph remembered his last glimpse of the previous guards, the twins, and wondered what had become of them. With a bolt of inward panic he imagined the hunters setting them loose in the forest then tracking them down… No. He himself had survived. Ralph was far more of an enemy to Jack than Sam and Eric were.

He turned back to the protecting sheet of rock opposite the entrance and sat down against it. The spot was free from wind but the sun filled it with warmth. Ralph closed his good eye and breathed, trying to live with the pains and flashbacks.

'Chief says I'm not to let you go,' called Roger, a trace of excited menace in his voice.

'Couldn't if I tried,' muttered Ralph meekly.

The sun grew hotter by the minute. Roger stood up on his ledge and casually walked out of sight, as if daring Ralph to attempt an escape, but the prisoner was too tired and too rational to move. He knew Roger's nature now, and did not want to provoke the boy's more pernicious tendencies. Ralph looked around and saw pink rocks providing a natural barricade for the cave and its crude patio. Behind the sheet was the ledge from which Roger had unleashed the boulder… He tried to remember the dream, to recapture its feeling of breezy hope, but the images were dying. The prisoner and the warden remained on the rock, alone and taciturn.

After a while a fresh sound drifted up from the forest; Ralph looked up to see Roger clambering down the rock and coming towards him with an admonitory jab of his spear. Ralph flinched as the other boy passed him and climbed over the sheet to greet the others. Again the sound pierced through the distant sounds of ocean and high wind, and Ralph recognised it as a conch. They had found another one.

Anticipating a humiliating confrontation with his old enemy in front of the hunters, he staggered back to the cave to be shielded by darkness again. The furry thing on which his head had rested was the bolstered hide of a wild pig – and another was on the way, for the hunters had returned triumphant; Ralph heard the gloats and cheers from the throng as they passed the cave entrance and went farther up the rock to where the fire was. He remembered his own hunger and his stomach rumbled. If offered food, he knew that he would take it with little hesitation or pride.

He sat pondering in the dim, cool cave for a while, then he heard feet shuffling on the ground outside. Looking up he saw two symmetrical outlines pausing at the entrance, and immediately recognised them.

'Sam 'n' Eric!' he cried, hoarse but affectionate.

The twins walked in, thankful for his warmth, and sat on the floor, creating what Ralph hoped was a triangle of potential rebellion. They had brought an older hide with them, in which a strip of unevenly cooked meat sat in its juices. Together they held it forward and Ralph fell on the flesh, devouring it within a minute.

After he had finished licking his lips he looked up at the twins gratefully. They gazed back at him with guilty, troubled faces.

'It's alright,' said Ralph, wiping his mouth with the back of a hand and almost licking that too. 'Don't feel bad about yesterday.' He recalled their agonised moans outside the thicket. 'Did Jack and Roger hurt you badly?'

The twins shifted on their behinds. 'Not so much,' said one, whom Jack thought was Sam. The other said, 'We're part of the tribe now.'

Their initiation rite had been torture. Now Ralph was the lone rebel.

'What will they do with me?' he asked, thinking uncomfortably about Roger perched on the high rock. He could be right above him even now.

The twins sustained their glum countenances. 'Don't know,' mumbled Sam. 'He never tells us anything,' followed Eric. 'Just orders us around.'

Ralph's hopes of staging a revolution faded. The twins had been humbled by the hunters, and now that the other two fifths were gone forever… He shook his head, suddenly depressed, and told the twins to leave him alone. Sadly the two brothers trudged to the cave entrance together and disappeared into the sunlight, as Ralph reclined on the flattened skin and held on to the flickering traces of his dream.

The day grew older and he wallowed in dejection. An hour or two passed, then at around noon the first silhouette returned. Ralph identified the matt fronds of long red hair, plastered by sweat and blood, and regarded the spear with unease. Jack walked into the cave and crouched down two feet away from Ralph's raw bed.

'I let the twins in,' he said, his face impenetrable through the red and white. 'Couldn't let you die, could I?'

Ralph stared back neutrally. 'What happened yesterday?'

'I thought you'd give us more of a fight,' remarked Jack, sitting down with the spear jutting up between his legs. 'Though if you had, perhaps we wouldn't have spared you.' He snorted lightly. 'You were raving mad by the time we got to you on the beach. Roger wanted to do you but I said no.'

'How charitable,' Ralph dared with his sarcasm. 'What happens now?'

'Dunno,' said Jack, tapping the spear from one hand to the other. 'You could never be a part of my tribe. You're too independent. Always getting clever ideas.'

'Well I can't stay locked up here,' said Ralph, bitterly. 'Let me go. I'll… I'll live on the other side of the island.'

'With us as the only source of meat?' said Jack, surprised. 'You'd die. You can't live on fruit forever. Besides, those wounds have to heal.'

'As if you care,' said Ralph. 'Maybe you just want to rear me like an animal and then…' He stopped himself, feeling swells of emotion inside his chest.

Jack stood up and laughed. 'Interesting idea. I'll ask Roger what he thinks of it.' The hunter left Ralph in the ambiguous shades of the cave.

NOW THE VOICES were easier to distinguish; opening his good eye again, the fair-headed one could hear Jack and Roger talking _sotto voce_ at the entrance to the cave. The two hunters were squatting down, black shapes against the evening navy, discussing something of importance away from their prisoner and the other hunters. Around him Ralph made out about ten supine shapes on the floor, and guessed that the rest were outside or in a lower cave. Now that Ralph's group had been crushed and there was no division on the island, perhaps some of them had rebuilt the shelters near the pool… No, Ralph snorted to himself, it was probably too much work for them. Jack heard the noise and turned inward to the sleepers, and Ralph could feel those dispassionate eyes burning into his through the darkness. He lay down again silently and waited for his mental exhaustion to drag him under, but he remained perturbed into consciousness. With a scuffle Jack and Roger crept into the cave and lay down in their beds near the entrance. Ralph watched them from the good eye. Jack tossed about for a while then was still, but Roger seemed anxious; after a while he sat up on an elbow and looked down at his sleeping captain. He was still gazing at Jack when Ralph finally fell asleep.


	2. Dilemmas

CHAPTER TWO

_Dilemmas_

THE NEXT MORNING began as a lucid replay of the previous one. Ralph was on his back with his head tilted towards the glinting entrance, and upon opening his eyes he again saw specks of light broken by black. Now he knew what the darkness had been: the legs of hunters, standing over him with morbid interest. The light was the teasing optimism of the sunbeams behind them. Ralph craned his neck and looked at their faces: to a boy they were caked in dirt and paint. The image was disturbing, so Ralph turned his head the other way and closed his eyes. Then he heard Jack speaking from the entrance.

'Listen! It looks like there'll be another storm tonight, so I say we should hunt again this morning while we still can. Then we'll have plenty of meat to go round for the next day or two. Any objections?'

His query was an insidious invitation. No one was meant to resist and they did not; the cave was passively silent.

'Good,' said Jack. 'We'll need fruit, too. The littluns can get that.'

'Aren't they too small?' put in a hunter, rather rashly.

Jack scowled, then scoffed: 'They can stand on each other's shoulders.' He turned to his second in command. 'Roger, give the others their orders.'

Roger left the cave to administer the Chief's dictates to the smaller children and the displaced hunters. Jack looked past the congregation at the sullen prisoner.

'Ralph, you're coming with us. Bill, Maurice, get him to his feet.'

The two henchmen advanced on Ralph but he scrambled up to avoid coercion. The aches had dulled somewhat but the flesh wound still burned rhythmically. He could just about open his bad eye. With a sharp thrust of his spear Jack signaled the beginning of the hunt; he strode out of the cave and over the sheet, and the tribe followed with a perceptible air of exhilaration. The crowd tumbled over the ledge and climbed down to the neck that led to the mainland, and suddenly the remainder of the older children appeared at the entrance to the forest. Roger took his place behind Jack and the reunited group entered the deep, wild wood together.

Ralph traipsed in the back half with his eyes on the brutal ground, dry leaves and disembodied branches biting at the soles of his feet. Maurice gave him a grim prod in the back with his rudimentary spear and the fair-headed one quickened his pace. After a while Jack stopped and raised the back of his hand, then jabbed it to the left and right to herald the usual routine; on either side the hunters feathered out into a wide line, leaving Ralph, Jack, Maurice and Bill in the centre. After a statuesque pause Jack relaxed and spun round to face his remaining enemy.

'You're going to earn your keep, Ralph,' he stated in a sepulchral tone. 'If you want to eat again you'll have to hunt for _all_ of us.'

Ralph remembered hurling his spear at a hurtling animal, and his premature thrill at getting so close to a kill. That euphoria was long dead, and now, in his weakened and soulless condition, he was being forced to perform the most acutely uncivilised act. He had been so close to death himself… Impatient, Jack gestured with his head to the two guards, and Maurice and Bill pushed Ralph up in front. He stumbled indignantly, then decided to convert his dismay into determination.

Jack spoke preemptively: 'Don't try to escape, Ralph. There are twenty ravenous hunters around you.' He was inspired again, cold and fascistic.

The pig run broadened in front of the prisoner, sweeping out of sight behind thick trees fifty yards away. Pensively Ralph began walking. He lacked the fervent steel of the Chief but would have to compensate; if he failed at this ultimatum, who knew what the hunters would do to him. Ralph shook the thoughts from his head and increased his speed. Ten yards behind him the three hunters followed, and farther away the scattered crew trod softly, obscured by the overhead breeze and the calling ocean.

Ralph opened his bad eye wider and inspected recent droppings – behind him Jack was rapt, judgmental. The prisoner strode on, watching and listening. Nothing moved except his watchers and the distant hunters; a twig snapped underfoot nearby and Jack made a guttural warning noise.

After an age of fruitless wandering Ralph heard a sound: a porcine grunt, then a reply. The foursome was nearing a resting animal. Ralph slowed almost to a stop, and his heart rose to his throat – he was unprepared for this barbarism, having suffered so bitterly himself at the hands of the hunters.

Jack came up to him, staring ahead. 'Well, now's the time, Ralph.'

Here the path forked in two, the main line of the run continuing to the left, in the direction of the beach, and a smaller track swerving hard right towards the rocky spine of the island. The sounds were coming from the smaller path.

Ralph surrendered his conscience to the task at hand as Jack handed him his own spear, then with a blank expression the boy crept forward with a bent gait, fingering the crude weapon in both hands. The smaller path was darker than the main run, with the arms of adjacent trees winding together ten feet above. The growth was dense, chaotic. Somewhere here was the prey.

Suddenly the grunts were loud; Ralph jumped inwardly and tensed up. Five feet ahead the trail ended in a wall of crossed ferns and branches, from the depths of which the noises were emanating. Ralph made no sound as he paused and tried to make out tangible animal shapes. He could just espy a lying beast in the undergrowth, the same colour as the pink mountain. Was there one or more creatures? Vividly he remembered the pouring bite marks on the ankles and wrists of the other hunters after their first success. He gazed down at his own wounds ironically, then, twisting his fingers round the spear, made his move.

Ralph leapt into the undergrowth with a brutal plunge of the spear, and the noises were terrible and tragic. Behind him Jack watched aloofly. Only Maurice and Bill displayed any disquiet.

A WATERY SUN was directly above when the hunters returned. Sam and Eric fulfilled their usual duty by carrying the awful corpse on a spear. The creature had been stabbed repeatedly, and blood dripped onto the sheet of rock as the twins clambered over it towards the higher place of the fire.

Ralph was silent and sick. When the group straddled the summit Roger approached him and sarcastically ruffled his parched yellow hair. Ralph flinched and rearranged it. Recently he had forever been brushing it out of his eyes, but now the oily, earthy mess was plastered behind his ears and hardly moved. He watched Jack and the twins unbind the carcass from its pole, then the Chief hacked at the neck eagerly, still bloodlustful and delighted. Eventually the head was severed.

Jack turned to Maurice. 'For the Beast,' he said simply. Automatically the other boy took the hideous object in both hands and climbed down the rock to the neck. Ralph assumed the head would be impaled on a stick. The Lord had a new successor.

The fire was kindled with the help of Piggy's broken specs. Ralph flinched again and turned away. The inevitable, pathetic chant returned and he tried to obliterate it with the dream, but it was vanishing. Only sleep could conjure it again.

The crew tore into the stringy flesh with abandon while Ralph surveyed his own portion solemnly. The Chief looked up and jeered: 'Enjoy it. You caught it after all. If you don't want it give it to a littlun.'

The smaller children were there too, splayed at the edges of the crowd. All of them were filthy, with glazed faces and chimney sweep hair. Every now and then one would leave the group hurriedly, and Ralph guessed they had diarrhea. He scowled at his feet as he chewed; what a sad, degenerate state they were in. With genuine, paradoxical feeling he suddenly didn't want to be found. Civilised life would be a mockery after this, a charade. He was doomed to extinction on the island, amongst orphans, savages, and the corrupt.

He would have cried but his body was bereft of water; he remembered his thirst and took a coconut shell of clean water from someone a little younger than him. The hunter gave him a sour look but said nothing. The liquid was warm and acrid yet refreshing; Ralph emptied the whole shell then fingered the concave, but the inside was as devoid of nutrition as his shock of blond hair. Glumly he replaced the shell and waited for further developments.

Jack hurled a bone into the staggered fire and stood up, his shorts clinging to his legs in stained ridges. 'Good hunt,' he said approvingly, and the central group nodded and muttered in assent as they licked their fingers. 'We shan't eat the fruit now,' he stated, pointing to a skinful of soggy grey ovals by the fire. 'We'll have them tonight if the storm comes.'

As the hunters got up to stretch themselves, Ralph imagined the stifling atmosphere of being surrounded in the cave again. Validating Jack's forecast, the sun went behind a cloud and the island was suddenly dim; the Chief ordered more leaves and branches for future fires while they were still dry. Sam, Eric and three others left speechlessly while another took the fruit to the cave and most of the others dispersed to find their own preoccupations. Now Ralph would see first-hand what the hunters got up to on their sordid Castle Rock.

Jack swept down the ledge to the cave with Roger, leaving Ralph alone with Maurice, Bill and a figure whom he thought was Henry. A few metres away a cluster of littluns huddled together between two shafts of rock, dejected and seemingly still hungry, but in the other direction, naked to the brittle wind, another group was more animated and seemed to be hatching a plan. Ralph surveyed them idly as Bill and Maurice stared into the orange embers of the fire. Five minutes later two of them trotted past the older boys and descended the mount, then the remaining two followed soon after. Ralph became amused: there was definite intention in their movements. A minute later he himself followed them, gingerly finding footholds with his raw, hard soles. On the flat space outside the cave he saw one of the four peering into the entrance, while two others whispered near the sheet that hid the island from view. Ralph ducked behind one of the barricading rocks. Curiously he watched the play unfold.

The watching littlun dipped behind a rock by the entrance and nodded at the other two, who immediately began bickering loudly, each accusing the other of stealing meat and even hitting them on the arm. Neither of them could be more than eight years old… A moment later Jack appeared at the entrance, pulling up his shorts. He advanced on the fighting duo.

'What's the meaning of this?' he demanded, separately the squealing boys with his strong hands. The fighters continued to make wild accusations as Roger came out of the cave with a puzzled expression.

'Shut up,' the second in command said flatly. 'We'll banish you to the forest if you keep this up.'

'That's enough, Roger,' said Jack.

Suddenly Ralph knew what the plan was, for as soon as Roger had joined Jack, the watching boy on the other side of the crude patio nimbly jumped from behind his rock and tiptoed into into the darkness. Ralph smiled faintly, willing him to succeed, while the fighting boys brought Roger into the fray. Soon the older boys were tussling with them, taken in by the farce, then the third child appeared at the entrance, clutching seven or eight pieces of fruit; after a wide-eyed glance at the grappling four he dashed behind his rock again then quietly made his way down the ledge towards the neck. Seeing their partner achieve his goal, the other two relented grumpily to Jack and Roger, and allowed them to be pushed back to the steep rock that led to the summit.

'Stay there and shut up,' said Jack angrily, and after they had timidly followed his orders, the Chief looked meaningfully at Roger and retreated back into the cave with him.

Behind his rock, Ralph glowed with a kind of fraternal pride. This feeling was vicarious, for beside Sam and Eric he had no friends here to help him acquire _his_ needs. Even the twins were wary of being seen with him. Suddenly peaceful, he climbed back to the summit and warmed his hands by the embers with the silent Henry. Bill and Maurice lay dozy-eyed behind one of the large rocks that dotted the dipped surface, and the other group of littluns slept in a destitute pile.

The day wore on, interminable and plodding. Henry left sullenly, and Bill and Maurice were replaced by more littluns, who bunched around the dead fire with their terrible eyes. Ralph saw that their own flames were weakening.

In the afternoon the island was besieged by wind and inconsistent rain. The boys retired to the cave, keeping a distance from Jack and Roger, who sat nonchalantly by a shoulder of rock by the entrance. Eventually Jack stopped perfecting a spear with his penknife and addressed the group.

'Time to eat. One of you go and get the others.'

Bill sped off obediently while Maurice went to the back of the cave to locate the store of pungent fruit. With an exclamation he turned to Jack.

'Some of it's gone!' he cried.

Instantly Jack was on his feet, gratified to be outraged again. 'I call a meeting!' he shouted, and staunched out to claim the summit.

The hunters groaned and sighed wearily as they followed the Chief. Ralph wondered if he could use this dejection to his advantage as he followed them – only Roger seemed to be truly dedicated to Jack now. Ralph followed the flock slowly, and sat outside the group when they gathered round the lukewarm ashes. Jack was walking up and down, still holding his penknife; Roger leaned on a rock behind him, his face grimly expectant.

When the last children had congealed into place, Jack launched into his diatribe.

'Maurice tells me some of the fruit has gone missing. I expressly told all of you that you weren't to eat it, and someone has disobeyed me!' He glared round at the tired, nervous assembly. 'If anyone knows who did it, now is the time to speak up.'

Predictably the crowd was silent. Ralph looked round surreptitiously and identified the bowed heads of the three offenders. The two fighters were sat a little way off from the watcher.

Jack was growing fiercer. 'I tell you if I don't find out who did it then none of you will eat!'

A murmur of dismay arose from the congregation. Jack seemed to look every one of the hunters in the eye. Again they remained taciturn, but after a petrified silence a shivering hand slowly went up. Ralph's heart leapt as he realised it was the fourth boy, who had neither created the diversion nor stole the fruit. He was looking up, terrified, into Jack's scorching eyes.

'You!' said the Chief, and motioned to Bill and Maurice. Quickly they grabbed the small boy and brought him before the dictator. 'Why did you do it?' he asked meanly.

The boy quivered and writhed in the henchmen's hands, willing himself to take the blame. 'I… I was hungry, Chief,' he stammered, and Ralph clutched at his chest: the injustices of life on the island were breaking his heart. He knew what would follow and craved to prevent it.

Jack summoned the waiting Roger, who took a spear from one of the hunters and maliciously tapped its point with a grubby finger. The Chief nodded at the two henchmen and they roughly pushed the child over a flat rock. He was bent over forcefully – and Ralph leapt to his feet.

'Don't do it, Jack!' he shouted, but the captain was adamant; again he nodded to his henchmen and they lunged at Ralph, holding him by each arm.

'Do it!' screamed Jack, and Ralph shut his eyes tightly. Seconds later cries and whimpers drifted into the darkening air as Roger gleefully administered the punishment. The sound of splintered wood on young flesh was sickening. After twenty or so paddles Jack pushed Roger away, and addressed the crowd as the boy pulled up his shorts.

'That's what happens if you disobey the rules!' he cried, even angrier than before. 'Let that be a lesson to you!' Perhaps for the sake of twisted humour, he concluded this perverse spectacle with, 'Class dismissed.'

The boys shifted back into animation, and gravely left the summit of Castle Rock. As he trudged with them Ralph picked out the brave, guilty trio. All three were shaking with anguished tears.


	3. Nemeses

CHAPTER THREE

_Nemeses_

JACK'S STORM RUMBLED through the night. In the caves and recesses of the island the hunters clung together, shivering in the frigid air. On Castle Rock Ralph was awake for hours, irritated by the fidgeting of the boys around him as well as his thoughts of the lost dream. He longed to be standing on the deck again, feeling the generous sun on his hair and shoulders.

At midnight lightning flashed over the island and thunder cracked. Now and then bolts lit up the inside of the steamy cave, and gave Ralph, the only voyeur, brief windows on the activities of his superiors. Tonight Jack and Roger slept farther inside the cavity, side by side, and during an extended, consecutive series of flashes Ralph could see the deputy's infatuation with his boss dilating. During his restless twists the boy would sit up and look over at the hunched shoulders of the Chief. His expression was dour as usual, but infected by a doubtful longing… Ralph turned on his other side, confused. At last he felt his eyelids flickering, and as the skyrolls abated he finally fell asleep.

IN THE MORNING Jack rose quietly before anyone else, and crept out onto the sheet that overlooked the island. The forest had been drenched in the night, and so had the sun; it shone meagre, weak beams over the treetops, and had almost no effect on the distant, pale horizon. Today the sea was hungover from the tempest, and the waves that lapped at each side of the island were reluctant and choppy.

Inside the cave Ralph was frowning in his sleep. He was on the cruiser again, and the weather was beautiful, but he could not enjoy it fully; he had to find his father. He turned left through a doorway and walked deeper into the ship. The crew was invisible. Ralph knew – intuited – that there were only two people in this hulk. He stepped into a room with flashing panels of lights and came to a circular hole. Down a ladder he went, guided by hungry curiosity. Now he was in a large room that resembled the sports hall in his school. In the centre stood vaulting apparatus. Ropes hung from the ceiling like creepers in the forest. Cautiously he walked in – then the double doors behind him slammed shut. Ralph spun around, expecting either a monster or his father, but there was no one there, and the doors had disappeared into brickwork. The hall was now a tomb, deep underwater and inaccessible. Did anyone know he was there?

The boy turned and looked around the room. The ceiling was farther away than before, and the tops of the ropes were barely discernible. They began to twitch, as if life was being breathed into them – then suddenly the ends had snake heads with flickering, evil tongues; they licked the air around him with a hissing sound, and he fled into the centre of the room where the vaulting box lay.

Then he heard tapping from inside the object. Bewildered and horrified, he put his hands on the leather exterior and prepared to push. All he wanted was his father. The box was heavy when he placed his weight against it, but it began to tilt and then with a violent thrust the boy tipped it over. He stared down at the dying body of his mother, dressed in black with a red flower in her gaping mouth. Her eyes opened slowly and she looked at her son with an expression of confused horror…

Ralph began screaming in the cave, waking up the hunters around him. Roger sat up, startled, then Jack came in and swiftly walked to Ralph's bed. He shook the boy to consciousness. Ralph turned and gazed at Jack, petrified from the nightmare, before his senses returned and he began to breathe slower.

'You woke up the whole tribe,' said Jack, with a hint of disquiet through the usual scorn. 'I've never heard a person moan like that…'

Ralph was emotional and reactive from the visions. 'What about Simon?' he shot back hotly, then remembered his own involvement.

Jack looked at him quizzically. His face softened a little. 'Well don't blame yourself. Everyone was at fault.' He hardened again. 'Just keep quiet, will you? It's probably only six in the morning.'

He went off irritably. Ralph got his breath back and wiped his forehead; the cave was hot from the close bodies on the ground, but his mental ordeal had made him perspire more profusely. He turned on his side again and felt ironic alleviation from the cooling sweat on the animal skin. Perversely, he wanted to remain asleep for as long as he was on the island, for when he was unconscious he could not feel the ringing aches in his stomach and feet, and in his nightmares there was always the hope of redemption. But he was too restless after that, and when the hunters were asleep again he got up and went out into the drizzly, cerulean morning. Jack was standing on the sheet again, gazing out at the whelming horizon, which encompassed the island from every visible degree. He heard Ralph patter on the patio and looked down at him.

'I'm exiling Percival and Johnny,' said the Chief, and Ralph remembered the names from his recent, distant past.

'Why tell me?' asked the fair-head.

'Because they tricked me yesterday,' said Jack, curious to see what the other boy's reaction would be to sending two small boys out into the wilderness. 'They diverted me and Roger while the other one stole the fruit.'

Ralph was appalled. 'Leave them alone, for heaven's sake. They were only hungry.'

'Everyone's always hungry,' snapped Jack. '_I_ never complain, and I don't eat more than anyone else.'

'Those two are young kids,' said Ralph, wincing in the sharp, lemony light. 'How long will you send them away for?'

'We'll see,' said Jack indulgently. 'Could be a day, could be a week. See how _they_ like it having to hunt for food.'

Ralph felt that he could never change Jack's mind. He looked up at him in disgust. Above them the sun flickered into life and began to dry the staggered forest. The boys broke their gazes and turned away, Jack to the horizon, Ralph to the cave. He picked up a pile of wood and fern and clambered to the summit. Jack half watched and called to him tauntingly.

'There's no one coming to help, Ralph. A fire won't do any good. It's a waste of wood.'

Ralph kept on, furiously pushing the branches into a dense pile in the centre of the damp ashes. He remembered the specs and looked about for them.

'Looking for these?' asked Jack from the edge of the rock, and took the frail remains from around his belt. Ralph took them from him silently and angled the good disc between the sun and the wood. From the corner of his good eye he saw Jack surveying him critically, and felt like pushing him over the cliff. After a minute the sun glared strongly enough to produce a chain of feeble smoke, and within five the dry ferns were alight. A dark column rose from Castle Rock into the sullen sky.

'Fat lot of good that'll do,' gloated Jack. 'Who wants to be rescued anyway? You heard what they said on the radio.'

'Shut up,' said Ralph, flatly. 'Even if you don't want to be rescued, _I do_. I'd rather swim out to sea than spend another day with you.'

Jack snorted again, but seemed displeased. He returned to the cave.

PERCIVAL AND JOHNNY were crestfallen when their fate was prescribed to them that afternoon. Having witnessed their vicarious redemption from the fourth boy, they assumed their future would conform to the past, but now they stood before Roger, Bill and Maurice, who blocked the entrance to the cave, and were told by the deputy that Jack was not easily fooled.

'You're to go into the forest,' said Roger, sourly. 'And don't come back for three nights.' The smaller boys besieged the guards but Bill and Maurice maintained dispassionate visages. Roger prodded them. 'Go on! You deserve it for making fun of us.'

Alarmed and rueful, Percival and Johnny slowly climbed over the sheet and made their way down to the isthmus.

Ralph was nearby, urinating nostalgically in the thicket; he met the two youngsters at the entrance to the forest. Saddened by their appearance he rashly ran over the neck of rock and called up loudly to anyone who would hear.

'Roger! Bill! I'm going with Percival and Johnny. Don't try to stop me.'

Roger peeked over the ledge and stuck out his tongue.

Ralph sped back to the waiting boys, who were delighted to have such an ethical guardian. He put an arm around each of them and the three wandered off into the forest.

'I saw your little plot yesterday,' said Ralph, smiling down at the mouselike Percival. The child looked up in surprise, but Johnny, who with his amber hair and pleasant countenance resembled a smaller version of Ralph, laughed loudly.

'Thanks for not turning us in,' he said, with some adoration.

'Did you share it out equally?'

Johnny nodded. 'Between six of us.'

Ralph ruffled his hair approvingly.

The three boys sauntered through the dark woods, then Ralph stiffened, first espying an outer stretch of the pig run, then hearing a near-off call from a savage. The tribe was either hunting again or playing a war game. Ralph wanted to avoid them, and more specifically Jack, completely, so he steered his charges left towards the beach. Soon the hue of the vegetation grew lighter, and eventually palm trees waved at them. The sun shone hotter and by the time the trio reached the white expanse they were in high spirits. In comfortable silence they traversed the silky stretch until they came to the pool and the platform, where the early meetings had taken place. Ralph could almost see the conch gleaming on the abandoned log he once used as a seat.

They stopped and the younger boys rested beneath a palm tree while Ralph ran into the forest to collect fruit, then the three sat munching in contentment, gratified that their exile had turned out to be so enjoyable. They joked that they would rather stay there than go back to Castle Rock, but Ralph knew that only the hunters could provide meat and fire with any consistency. Suddenly lighter of heart, the older boy pulled down his shorts and plunged headlong into the pool. The water was freezing from the gelid clime, but it felt marvellous to be clean again; the boy submerged himself totally and flipped over and over under the surface. Percival and Johnny came to the edge and laughed.

When he was refreshed Ralph rinsed the remains of his shorts and wondered what on Earth had become of his other clothes, for like most of the children his shirt had seemingly evaporated. The pool was now murky with feathers of earth and blood, but the sea would replenish it at high tide. Ralph felt revitalised, and pushed the horrors of the island to the back of his mind. 'Let's build a shelter,' he said rhetorically, and walked into the fringe of the forest to gather substantial branches. Enlivened by the older one's purpose, Percival and Johnny stooped earnestly for armfuls of leaves and ferns.

After going back and forth several times Ralph strode deeper into the emerald gloom, with the vague idea of finding a fallen tree to use as a backbone for the shelter. A hundred feet into the forest the ground became finer: a potpourri of leaves and twigs with confettis of small pink flowers. Between the patchwork of grey trunks and clicking, invisible wildlife he stopped walking, and breathed in the deep forest scent. During the inhalation flowers seemed to rise up and fling their aroma into the air – with his eyes closed the boy became spellbound by the magic of the wood. The ocean fell back on every side, and the wood expanded on its periphery and closed in where he stood. He felt himself growing roots into the earth…

A faraway scream disrupted the reverie. Ralph opened his eyes, wild again, and punctuated the end of his trance by instinctively snorting out of his clogged nostril. A slug of dried blood and mucus ejected over his mouth and he wiped it away, revolted. Then he located the source of the scream. It was up ahead, somewhere to the right…

Disorientated, the boy took off at a jog in that direction, and after fifty yards the lean trees fell away from him, leaving a sun-stroked clearing of creepers and shrubs. Before seeing the screamer he knew its provocation: the ghastly pig's head sat grinning on a spear in the centre of the clearing. The stained weapon was camouflaged by the background ambiance, so the head appeared to be floating in the air, suspended by evil. Ralph twitched out of his surprise and looked to his right, where Percival cowered behind a bordering tree and stared, petrified, at the hanging head. Johnny was nowhere to be seen.

The older boy stepped between the two and broke the spell. 'It's alright,' he said soothingly. 'Just the hunters having a joke.' As he stroked the back of Percival's trembling head he looked back at the exhausted eyes. Black spots danced around the bloodied crown and alighted on the leathery ears. Recalling its skeletal predecessor, Ralph now found the sight less despicable – this Lord was a monument to a brutality he had grown used to. There was no monster here, merely superstition and primitive ritual. The only beasts on the island were the hunters.

He turned Percival around and marched him in the other direction. The forest grew thick again then relented starkly to the shore, and the youngster relaxed again when he saw the white beach and its frothing parent. Johnny appeared blithely at the site of the prospective shelter with an armful of leaves, and Ralph looked forward to an autumnal bed after two nights of rock and hide. He had not found a large tree with which to construct a robust and durable house, but he was disillusioned with the forest, so he set to work interweaving the smaller branches while Percival and Johnny raked the floor into place.

From a denser pack of trunks fifty yards away two blinkless eyes watched this isolated industry. They belonged to a boy with regular features – onyx hair, logical nose, lithe limbs – but the hazel irises held little humanity as they seared across the beach with insinuations of envy and intrusion. Roger picked at the hard wood of a palm tree as he watched Ralph erect a modest shelter for the littluns; after an hour the woven oval was complete, and Jack's deputy slunk away as the trio stood back critically. A palm provided a spine for the construct, a hollow tangle of branches laced with creepers. Percival and Johnny crept inside and lay down on the crackling leaves, Ralph threw more twigs onto the basket – and the house was complete.

The afternoon was well established when a brittle wind whipped up around Ralph's ears. He shivered as the air moved over fresh sweat, and crouched down to squeeze himself into the wooden cave. Percival and Johnny sat bundled together like Samneric. They besieged him to stay with them during the night and Ralph assented. He entertained the waifs with nostalgic tales of school and his home town, and before long the littluns were asleep. The memories of England gave Ralph a pang in his chest, and he felt tired. Sleep would provide a respite from his tortured thoughts, so he lay down on the leaves and sand-flecked earth, and quickly surrendered his troubles to slumber. The afternoon vanished and evening cloaked the island in navies and greys, then as the insect underworld continued to hum – a constant call – night came down and fully enveloped the beach.

A smart, friendly moon traversed the sky as the trio slept, but they were not alone on the smooth side of the island, for the watcher had returned with an abject plan. Roger moved stealthily behind the wall of palms that separated the forest from the beach, holding a gathering of sticks bound by creepers in one hand. At its top was a bunching of faded linen, a sacrifice from a littlun, which burned a dull orange in the otherwise densely black treescape. The deputy passed the pool and the platform, and stopped behind the palm that spined the new shelter. In the moonlight his face gleamed with cruel mischief; silently he held out the crude torch to the base of the shelter and watched raptly as the flame spread over the leaves. The smoking persimmon silently licked outwards, and Roger backed into the shadowing trees to watch the destruction.

Inside the shelter Ralph's mind was excited by glimpses of dreams, while the younger children slept deeply and mindlessly. Smoke began to filter through the crossed branches and lingered passively at the roof. In the dream world, Ralph found himself at the bottom of the garden, feeding sugar to the wild ponies. When they had finished crunching the snow cubes, he looked back at the house and saw his father standing by the backdoor. Ralph waved but the man did not move. Puzzled, the boy left the contented animals and began walking to the house, but with every step the building contracted and shrank from him. He stopped, bewildered, and the contractions halted, then with sudden desperation he started to run. The house disappeared in seconds – then with a gasp Ralph was back on the island, staring up at the roof of the shelter from an awkward foetal position. At once he saw the grey clouds slinking overhead and made an exclamation. Rapidly he shook the other two awake; startled, they let Ralph pull them out of the shelter and onto the furrowed beach. They stared in astonishment at the furnace. The fire had taken hold of the whole shelter; it was now a lava-coloured ball of flame.

From his vantage point Roger smirked joylessly. He was a difficult boy to satiate, especially after the levering of the boulder. Indifferent to the well-being of the boys on the beach, he retreated into the gloomy forest with thoughts of Jack and the cave, but Ralph had glanced around for the perpetrator and saw an adumbral figure. Immediately he leapt from the beach, over the platform and into the sable shadows. Spearless and roused from his detached amusement, Roger took off through a rough stretch of the forest that ran parallel to his familiar track, and Ralph followed doggedly, the two spectres dancing over fern and flower. Suddenly Roger tripped over a tangling creeper, and Ralph saw the vandal crumble onto the wiry ground. He leapt on top of his sadistic enemy, holding down his hands with his own. Roger growled and spat, then stopped struggling and laughed up at his furious captor.

'What are you going to do, then? A hunter has to kill his prey.'

Ralph straddled him between the mottled, moonlit trunks. 'I'm not a killer,' he said definitively. 'Death's too good for you anyway.'

Roger was flippant but resented being lectured, and he took advantage of Ralph's moral pause by jabbing a knee up to the small of his back. Ralph grunted and loosened his grip on Roger's wrists, then the deputy wriggled loose and hit him on the jaw. The boy fell sideways as the arsonist scrambled to his feet and sped off into the night back to Castle Rock. Ralph was left stunned on the floor of the teeming jungle.


	4. Duel

CHAPTER FOUR

_Duel_

BEFORE HE OPENED his crusted eyes Ralph felt something soft by the sides of his stomach. Puzzled but unhurried, he stared up at a ceiling of high branches, then down at his supine body. Percival and Johnny were nestled next to him, reminding Ralph of suckling piglets. They were in the thicket near Castle Rock again, hidden from sight behind a cascaded boulder from the summit; the three had also been protected from wind and spies by the sheer density of the branches around them. Ralph felt curiously safe here, despite lying less than twenty yards from the source of his nemeses. He was refreshed and relaxed from deep sleep, and still felt clean, though his charges remained slumberous and unkempt. Both had been reluctant to bathe in the freezing pool water the previous evening.

Gently the older boy stood and padded to the path left by the boulder. Branches and ferns had folded back at best they could but it was easy to go in and out if the lower trail of destruction was known. Ralph pressed himself through the wooden arms and doubled back to the forest entrance, where the froth-bordered isthmus led to Castle Rock. He guessed it was approaching seven in the morning, and decided to cause consternation among the hunters. Most of them were initially harmless, leaving the obsequious core of Roger, Bill and Maurice as the main impediments.

Ralph walked past the lapping water and clambered up the first ridge. At the crest he saw a sleeping hunter covered by rags and skins. A spear lay by his side. Ralph felt a strong urge to scare the negligent guard but refrained, and instead took the weapon in both hands and silently advanced into the cave. Jack and Roger lay in different ignorances near the entrance. Fearless from congealed anger, Ralph stuck the spear into Roger's stomach. The skin turned white under the pressure and Jack's deputy shrieked awake.

Jack and most of the other hunters murmured in consternation, the Chief lunging at his own spear and several others reaching for theirs.

'What's the meaning of this?' demanded the Chief, looking from Ralph to Roger.

Ralph was incredulous. 'You tell me. Your second in command tried to kill me last night.' Roger squirmed and grunted but Ralph had him pinned. The spear was jagged and sharp.

'What are you talking about?' Jack scowled. 'I didn't know Roger even left Castle Rock.'

Ralph sensed that the two hunters were at cross purposes, and hoped that Jack would punish Roger for his whim.

'Yesterday I went with Percival and Johnny to the beach to build them a shelter, and Roger set it alight with us inside.'

Jack looked down warily at Roger. 'Is this true?'

Roger was grim and taciturn.

'I _said_ there was to be no more killing on the island,' the Chief continued. 'You disappoint me, Roger.'

Ralph was gratified by the scolding, but Jack looked up at him and said, 'And what did you think _you_ were doing, going with the others? I banished them, not you.'

Suddenly Ralph felt a heavy pain rip through his neck; he tumbled over Roger onto the hard, skin-strewn floor. Bill stood in his place, a branch in his hands.

'Well done, Bill,' said Jack smugly. He took Ralph's fallen spear and stood up. 'You and Maurice keep these two captive.'

Uneasily the two boys glanced at each other, but Jack preempted their confused allegiance: 'That's an order. Roger has misbehaved.'

The deputy grumbled and snorted as Jack swept out of the cave.

Ralph sat up, rubbing the back of his neck. He got a vicious stare from his fellow detainee.

'Where are they anyway?' Roger asked of the exiled littluns.

'I shan't tell,' said Ralph hollowly, adding jaw and neck to his list of injuries. 'You _still_ want to punish them?'

Roger shrugged and bowed his head in insolent boredom.

Presently Jack returned. He relieved the guards of their stifling watch and addressed the sullen captives.

'There shall be a duel between the two of you,' he stated audaciously. 'Only one of you will return to Castle Rock alive.'

Ralph and Roger looked up in horror as Jack roused the caveful of hunters, then flanked by Bill and Maurice he led the crowd down the cliff – passing a freshly cuffed guard – to the forest door, the two prisoners bundled in the centre of the throng. Jack unsnaked Bill's frayed belt from around his waist and cut it in half with his blunt penknife. 'Thanks, Bill.' Then he tied each piece around the right ankle of each captive. 'Whoever wins must claim the other one's belt and return here.'

Roger was ridden by angst. 'But Chief…'

He was quickly admonished with an earthy hand. 'That's my final word.' The leader was surrounded by thoughtless supporters. Roger was in limbo.

The Chief gave the guard's spear to Ralph and transferred Maurice's to the deputy, then barged through the centre of the crowd, splitting them in two. 'This group takes Roger to the foot of the mountain. The other takes Ralph to the beach.' He raised a fist in the air and shouted the terrible old lines _a cappella_.

'Kill the Beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood!'

The chant was taken up by his mindless minions, and when the song was beating behind him unstoppably Jack punched a fist in the direction of the beach – swiftly half the hunters surged forward, taking Ralph with them into the dense forest. Behind them the song echoed from the other group as they moved towards the mountain. The boy with fair hair was deposited at the end of the beach, where the hunters had made their fire, and where Simon…

As the crowd raced back to Castle Rock Ralph turned away from the charred pit and stared at the horizon. The powder blue sky was brushed by diluted pinks and the sun was invisible. It was still morning but the day was infected, uncaringly cool. The ocean was calm and pregnant.

The boy stood on the warm white sand and wondered how this duel would progress. For some minutes he was still and drowsy, then he heard a rustling sound from the palm trees behind him. It couldn't be Roger already… Ralph screwed up his eyes and stared into the shadows; a figure was creeping tentatively between the trees. After a hesitation it stepped out onto the beach and threw something down on the sand between them. Ralph looked. It was Jack's penknife.

'From the Chief,' said the anonymous hunter. Then he retreated to the trees and disappeared.

Ralph was confused. Had someone been dispatched to help Roger as well? If not, why would Jack want to give the advantage to his enemy? Cautiously, as if being watched, he bent down and picked up the rusting instrument. The blade slid out from its metal case with some difficulty; he replaced it and put the item between the strap around his ankle. Now he had two weapons.

Tousled and half naked, Ralph felt exposed on the beach. He wanted to avoid Roger for a while in order to gather his thoughts and form some sort of plan, so he walked to the centre of the beach and vanished into the woods again. The trunks were rigid and expectant around him. He sat down against one and stroked his spear. Instantly a splinter bit into his right index finger – more blood. He sucked it ruefully and closed his eyes in temporary defeat. For how long could he compete against nature, against human nature?

He remembered the black-haired child, the dark horse, the messiah, and how he had wandered off alone into the forest. Somewhere he had found a special place… Ralph wished he had his own hideaway, wished he could hibernate and wake up when the other children had all died and turned to dust. He was utterly alone here – and yet, in some eternal sense, there was a curious connection between him and the knifesman, which could still be kindled by doubt and silence…

The curtain in his head came down and he relented to the need to keep moving. He stood up and walked deeper into the forest, and the ocean fell away and became a distant hiss behind him. Spotting a series of disremembered signposts he swerved left, encouraged by the familiarities – the tree with the beauty mark; the incongruous bush; the circle of small pink flowers. Soon he was nearing the site of the rotting Lord. The boy smirked to himself, finding ironic solace in the hideous image. Once more the trees gave way and there was the head, patient and pathetic, hovering in the dull morning air.

Feeling a pang of sadism, Ralph walked up to it and stuck his left hand up the frayed neck. The opening was dry now but it still provided a coating of sticky resin; the boy leant his spear against the snout then smeared the crimson over each cheek. Was he becoming a hunter? Had he finally been corrupted by Jack? Ralph inhaled sharply, and promised his father he would hold on to his humanity. _Don't stoop to their level, son_.

Each boy knew where the other had been dropped, so Ralph felt safer now that he was off the beach, but the Lord of the Flies was still too prominent a pilgrimage. Abstractedly, the boy walked on in a northeasterly direction towards the obscurer spine of the island, clutching his spear and enjoying the cold metal of the knife against his ankle. During their first week here the older boys had explored the mountain, beach and peninsula, but the cliffs on the other side were enigmatic.

The forest grew denser as Ralph walked, but the floor was less harsh; it was leafier and strewn with flowers. The insect world was also more homogenous, producing consistent polyrhythms of ticks and responses. After ten minutes the ground sloped upwards, then a large marble shoulder jutted up out of the trees. Creepers and shrubs clung tenaciously to the steep edge, and at the top the forest continued. From the peninsula and the mountain this raised area blended in with the surrounding trees. Ambivalent, Ralph trudged onto a ridge that wound like a natural path and ended halfway up the cliff. There he sat down and caught his breath. He was charged by a primitive pulse of awareness. His senses were raw and flayed.

From his vantage point he could see the top of the mountain, but Castle Rock was totally obscured. The boy considered making a hideout here, and sheltering from the elements as well as Roger, for the atmosphere was uneasily neutral. The sun was still invisible. He wiped the sweat from his brow and gazed gravely at the mountain top. Screwing up his eyes again he thought he saw movement: a tiny dark shape traversing the side of the rockface. Ralph surmised that Roger was as nervous as he was, and he relaxed a little. Indeed, he felt safe on this ledge, and could almost hide his whole body behind a cluster of long grass.

He lay down and looked at the sky. In the middle of his eyeline the blue faded into white, and Ralph got the impression that farther on it disappeared completely, or ran like liquid out into the cosmos. His mind was wordless and coloured only by emotional associations and strong yet fleeting images. He felt his lids grow heavy and quickly lost his responsibility to sleep. The day went on around him, unconcerned and busy; tiny insects buzzed over his body and flirted on the browned skin. The dream was in danger of returning, irresistibly…

A scuffle of falling stones jogged him back to reality; he sat up wildly and looked down the slope. Roger stood a few metres away, spear pointing ahead, and stared through crazed eyes at his recumbent prey. Ralph grabbed his own spear and got to his feet. Roger must have dashed from the mountain in _minutes_…

The deputy advanced up the path, nature singing at high pitch in every direction, and the two spears met: Roger pushed Ralph's sideways and attempted a stab, but the sleeper was recharged by the will to live and hit back. The lances danced in the air, circling and pirouetting in tension. Roger stepped up the track and jabbed towards Ralph's chest. Again the boy's reflexes were correct: he leapt back on both feet as the spear hit the air mere centimetres from his heart. He glanced behind him for half a second. A few feet away the path ended and the cliff swept past and upward; to his right the edge was not sheer but still tumbled down at a giddy angle. Roger advanced again and Ralph hit out preemptively, using his spear as a club. It struck Roger on the temple and he faltered, dazed – then quickly Ralph charged him, the two weapons connecting with a loud knock, and Roger fell on his back with a grunt. Growing wilder in his death mask, Ralph discarded his spear, pounced on him, and managed to wrestle the weapon from his enemy; he hurled it down the slope and the stick disappeared into grass. The boys were flesh and leather again.

Roger's arms were pinned to the ground by his legs – a lesson had been learned from their previous tussle. Ralph remembered the knife and dislodged it from his ankle. The blade glinted keenly in the sober sunlight as he pushed it against Roger's throat. The deputy realised the game was up and surrendered his body to fate: he was too proud to struggle.

'Now's your chance, _Ralph_,' he sneered.

The boy with the knife paused as he had done in the forest, but this time out of luxury rather than inward conflict. This was his chance for revenge. _Do him in_. But what would the ghosts of Simon and Piggy say if they were standing by him? Would they be full of bloodlust? Ralph's veins were flowing with raw emotion. He looked down into the blank hazel eyes…

The moment passed. He couldn't do it. Daddy nodded his head proudly. Suddenly disgusted by being so close to Roger's body, Ralph leapt backwards and crouched like a frightened ape, wielding the knife in warning circles. Roger coughed and stayed in the same position, staggered and winded.

Ralph was sick of the sight of him, and shifted his eyes upwards to rest on the sturdy slope of grass and rock. The curtain had fallen temporarily on his intentions, but it raised again, and now the stage was different: his view had fallen on a shape that was unnatural, coincidental. It was a cross of bright grey wood… The site of a fresh grave.


	5. Signs

CHAPTER FIVE

_Signs_

THE SUN HAD finally woken up, and poured over Ralph and Roger as they crouched on the ledge in the late morning. The cross stood on a flat platform of grass between steeper inclines, and was hidden from view on the ground by a patch of dense vegetation. From his singular spot on the cliff Ralph could see it clearly: the wood was new and unblunted by rot.

Roger sat up painfully and followed the victor's gaze. Ralph shifted his attention back to the boy. 'Someone else is on the island,' he obvioused. 'None of us have been up here.' He remembered the figure on the mountain. It _couldn't_ have been Roger. A chill went up his spine. 'We're not alone.'

Still shaken by his fall, the deputy rubbed his neck and limbs as fresh grazes glistened with burgeoning blood. 'Where did you get Jack's knife?' he croaked.

Ralph was forming a plan. 'Stole it,' he said absently. He bit his lower lip and stared at the incongruous T, then suddenly resolved he issued his instructions: 'Go back to Castle Rock. Take my belt. Tell Percival and Johnny to go to the beach.'

Inwardly Roger believed that Jack expected his victory – that he would not miss an opportunity to obliterate their common enemy – yet he was unaware that the Chief had given the advantage to the other boy. Ralph hoped the captain would not react with surprise when his deputy returned "victorious".

Acquiescent, Roger nodded stiffly. Relieved, Ralph untied his belt.

Five minutes later the killer had disappeared into the forest, and the boy with fair hair stood alone with his spear. The grassy platform could be reached by leaving the ridge and clambering over a steeper section of the cliff, so Ralph set off with the aim of investigation. The cross had seemed like a mirage in the surreal morning light…

He sweated intensely as he climbed over alternating patches of grey and green. To reach the platform he had to jump several feet from the incline; unhindered by doubt he leapt hastily from a cornering rock and landed with a thump on the grass. At once he was obscured by the bordering plants, and could see almost nothing of the forest below. Feeling a pang of disturbance at the thought of treading on someone's grave, the boy approached the cross and knelt down three feet away on its diagonal. The wood was neatly cut and nailed together. An engraved inscription read:

ALIS GRAVE NIL

The boy identified Latin brevity but did not understand the words. He looked around. The platform was about six feet squared, with the cliff advancing on every side. Ralph deduced that whoever had made the cross was familiar with the island, or else had a map of it. This natural lawn was like a private garden. Unexpectedly his eyes were drawn to a small white blot in a corner of the square. Couldn't be a flower… With a tingle in his chest Ralph realised it was a cigarette end. Now the mystery was qualified: an adult had been here very recently.

Intrigued and slightly thrilled, he stood again and climbed back to the path with some difficulty. His plan was nebulous and instinctual: a stakeout higher on the hill. Somehow he would have to find a way up the cliff in order to gain a clearer viewpoint of the rest of the island. Visiting the mountain could be more dangerous, considering the unknown figure he had glimpsed.

Ralph was thankful for the vegetation that sprouted with regularity on the cliff; he could use the grass and shrubs as handholds during the steeper areas. By the time he half crawled onto the summit, noon had arrived and the day had become unforgivingly hot. The boy was suddenly desperate with thirst and surveyed the new geography. The raised area was a nucleus of the whole island: bean-shaped and topped with trees. It was as if a section of the forest had been pushed up out of the ground.

Ralph walked into the wood and searched for water, but there was none to be found. Dejected, but still buoyed by curiosity about the cross and the cigarette, he drove his spear into the earth and sat down against a trunk. Insects flew and crawled by: ignorant, sophisticated automatons.

He remembered the two victims of the island with a heavy heart. Was the cross for one or both of them? No: their bodies had been pulled out to sea, and the hunters were the only ones who knew of their demise. Ralph shivered and felt trickles of paranoia. He had never been so alone, yet he sensed an impending invading threat. Out of exhaustion and necessity he curled up and went to sleep.

JACK STOOD ON Castle Rock and watched a solitary figure snake through the edge of the forest to the connecting arm. He had relieved the other guard of his duty and was keen to witness the victor's return himself. Roger appeared on the isthmus and looked up at the Chief, and Jack's heart froze as his deputy raised the severed belt in one hand and shook his spear triumphantly in the other. Froth stroked the neck of rock as Roger walked back to his lair. Ralph was dead, and Jack was stuck with the killer.

A BREEZE BLEW gently through the wooded hilltop. Ralph felt the current breathe over his back and woke up, alert at once. Around him the trunks were white and spectral against the colourless dim of late afternoon. Soon the world would be cloaked again. The boy sat up, amazed he had survived for so long wearing only shorts, and sauntered back to the crest of the hill. From here he could see the wild slope, the semi-track, and the dip that led to the gravesite. He looked up at the mountain but nothing was moving. The spot where the early fires had been lit could be seen as a charred blemish on the flat peak. _Still_ he got the sense that something was building – something inevitable, something exciting. And was the something aware of him as well?

Visceral sensations prodded Ralph's anatomy like pins, so he walked along the crest to dull them with new movements, as if rubbing a sore bruise. Then he heard a sound quite distinct from the close, distant scream of wildlife. It was a consistent metallic noise, like a slow drill or a heavy mechanical door. He froze by the edge of the wood, then dashed to the nearest tree to hide himself. The sound was coming from farther inside the treescape of the hill. It was such an unusual sound after so many weeks of nature that the boy was startled, paralysed. He listened enthralled as the grating noise continued – then it stopped abruptly.

The forest was frozen, pregnant, potentially hysterical.

Now Ralph heard footsteps: _thunk thunk thunk_ on dry leaves. He peered around the edge of his slender tree and espied the dark, burly figure of a man walking away from him about twenty metres away. The boy saw that he was white like him – no indigenous tribesman, then – and wearing western clothes: boots, slacks and a heavy coat. The man's hair was red, like Jack's. The figure flickered behind trees then disappeared altogether.

Ralph remained statuesque for a good five minutes, then relaxed a little and decided to investigate further. Bravely, he pushed himself away from the trunk and slid over the leaves to where he had seen the man walking, then went in the direction from whence the figure had come. The man could not have walked for more than ten seconds before Ralph glimpsed him, so the boy soon stopped in a small clearing and looked around. Everything was as it should be: pure nature, if rendered farcical by the advent of the visitor. The trees still stood, the ground was even and yielded no clues. What was that metallic sound?

Echoing his spyment of the cigarette, Ralph noticed one incongruous aspect on the floor of the wood: a slight bunching of leaves in the centre of the clearing. Something had been casually obscured. The boy knelt down and gently brushed the leaves outwards, and there it was: a metal ring, attached to a copper-coloured circle in the ground. An underground tunnel? Where did it lead? Carefully Ralph tried to turn the wrought handle in both directions, but it would not budge. He pursed his lips and frowned. Another stakeout would be necessary.

He felt lonely again, on the quiet, secretive hill, and decided to walk down to the beach to find fruit and water. From there he could also choose between the mountain and the cliff as the best location for his second vigil. The higher one got the more mysterious everything became…

The boy scrambled down from the summit and began to run when he reached flatter ground. He sped into the forest and felt surges of delight at recognising his surroundings again: the beauty mark, the flowers, and finally the small stream that ran down to the pool on the beach. Ralph knelt and drank from the fresh, chuckling pura. It was sweet and delicious, like tasting tap water after biting into a lemon. He slurped devotedly for a minute, then lay on his back amongst the leafy debris, his body buzzing from the nourishment.

After a warning rumble from his stomach he got to his feet again and trotted towards the beach, on his way collating a handful of berries to eat in his coastal solitude. He still had Jack's knife, so when the beach was in sight he shinned up one of the bordering coconut trees and slashed at the tangle of brown string. Three olive ovals fell off and rolled onto the sand; Ralph jumped down and walked with them to the sandy pool with a rare feeling of entitlement. He sawed the top off a coconut then sat in the shining water up to his chest, drinking the sweet juice and gazing out at the opal ocean.

To his right lay tiers of distressing landmarks – the platform of ancient meetings; the recent remains of his shelter; the scar left by the plane during its landing, gradually being healed by the fringing undergrowth – and to the distant left lay the black spot that marked the memory of the hunters' fire. Keeping his head central, Ralph rested his eyes on the lagoon and its protecting reef in insouciant dissonance.

Presently he heard sounds from behind him, and turning around he saw the diminutive figures of Percival and Johnny traipsing through the forest towards the beach. So Roger _had_ stayed true to his word… No doubt because he had managed to "kill" Ralph whilst tacitly following his Chief's orders not to murder. Ironically, the deputy had come out of the duel with the most satisfaction.

With a jolt of pleasure Ralph placed the empty coconut shell by the side of the pool and drenched out to meet the younger boys halfway. They greeted each other with warm smiles, glad of the empathy from common experience, and lighter of heart to be back on the smooth beach with the threat of the hunters receding.

The afternoon was almost over as Ralph sawed open the remaining coconuts, then watched with vicarious satisfaction as Percival and Johnny drank through parched lips. This paradise might prove to be temporary, but they would enjoy it while they could. Ralph sketched out the events of his day to the littluns, but omitted the figure on the hill, not wanting to plant the image of another Beast in their minds. Evening began to shroud the island, so the trio collected fern for makeshift beds, none of them having the energy to build another shelter.

Darkness fell quickly. The three boys lay in allayed malnutrition, and Ralph thought about the man on the hill, and whether or not he should have spoken to him. The figure's clandestine quality told him not, and the ambiguity was compounded by dreams. His father was faceless, had vanished, broken promises. Adulthood seemed cynical and theoretical. Suddenly Ralph felt as young as Percival and Johnny.

He slept for an hour or so before sifting back to consciousness. A glance at the littluns told him they were still exhaustedly asleep. The boy sat up and looked at the dark palms with uncertainty, and then, summoning stubborn courage, stood up silently and walked into the black forest, leaving the youngsters vulnerable to solitude. He _had_ to visit the mountain. The lone shape on its summit had filled him with more curiosity than the man with red hair… assuming the latter had been underground all day and was therefore not the same person. Or were the two mounts connected by a tunnel?

Ralph quickened his pace and soon approached the mountain. It loomed above him, serious and disapproving, but he pushed on, climbing the colourless ridges that led to the crest. He had not visited the site of the early fires for what felt like months. Now he reached the last folds that lead to the summit, and stiffened, with memories of both the Beast and the figure mixing in his mind. The first monster had taken flight, swept across the sky and into the sea, but now like the Lord of the Flies it had an inheritor. One that most definitely lived and breathed… The boy passed the black patch and kept to the edge of the top level. A sudden wave of futility hit his heart, and he sat down thoughtlessly by a staggered bush. Yet again he felt utterly alone, and tried to combat the feeling by thinking of his two beachside allies, but to no avail. Friends were rarely as close as family anyway.

Currents of cold air exhaled over the mountain, rustling the charred bones in the fire. After half an hour Ralph began to anticipate a sleepless night free from adventure, but no sooner had the thought solidified in his brain than a human sound came to his ears. It was the treble crunch of boots on rocky earth. Ralph's senses sharpened immediately and he looked out from behind his hideout. The black shape had returned: a man was walking slowly and heavily towards the summit. Wildly, Ralph wondered if he would make smoke signals, and fantasised that Jack was in league with him, but his ideas were ludicrous and he made them dissipate. The man passed very close to where the boy crouched, and carried on over the summit, disappearing behind a sheet of rock. After a pause Ralph followed him. Up above the sky held its breath, impressed, perhaps amused. The entire expanse was brushed by silver clouds.

Ralph stopped and peered over the rocky edge. This was the side of the mountain where the children had caused a fire some months before; directly below him was a slope of grass and rock before the forest began. Gingerly, he clambered down and looked about him. The figure had vanished, and the boy wondered if there was another underground chamber here. He kept his eyes to the ground as he slowly approached the forest – then before he knew it a black ghost had leapt out of the dark and held him by the arms. Ralph shrieked and tried to wrestle free but the figure held him in a grip of iron.

Then it spoke, a gruff, deep voice: 'Go back to the others!'

Ralph looked up at the giant shape and trembled. The face was obscured by a brimmed hat and the moon was hiding behind clouds. The boy felt as if a shadow were holding him. He swallowed hard then stammered, 'Who are you?'

'That doesn't concern you,' rasped the man, 'however much you may think it does.' He pushed Ralph away roughly and the boy fell backwards to the cold, hard ground. The figure stepped forward to gave his final word. 'Return to the others. Stay with them. Don't mention this and don't come back here.'

And with that the figure turned and walked back into the forest, fearless and faceless. Ralph sat, shocked and terrified, and did not move for a minute. Then he scrambled to his feet and tore off over the mountain.


	6. Woman

CHAPTER SIX

_Woman_

JOHNNY KICKED A pebble by the shoreline; it skidded over a fresh wave and disappeared into the maya. The boy stood with his feet in the morning laps and tried to find it with his eyes, but the stone teased him, blended in with the shallow mosaic. When the next wave flowed over his toes he seemed to be moving backwards…

He shifted his gaze to the scribbly coral a mile away. Waves broke over its crest and made a constant, shimmering line of white between the island and the horizon; half the encompassed lagoon shone cyan before deep azure resumed to the frothy beach. Today a spot of white lay over the coral and did not move, as if a breaker had stopped in its tracks. Johnny stared at the curious ridge but thought little of it, and returned to the beds of fern to lie down again. There the other two were dozing in the shade of palms, while the sun beat rapturously everywhere else.

Eventually they stirred together and Ralph, who by now had a persistent sense of protectiveness, got up quickly to stretch himself. The beach yawned away on either side of him, white and cruelly luxurious. He stepped out onto the sand and surveyed the hazy mirages in the distance. Suddenly he frowned and espied what Johnny had seen.

'Hey, you two! There's a boat out there!'

The younger ones sat up, tousled and grumped. Johnny ran out to stand by Ralph. 'It's a boat?'

'You've already seen it?'

'I got up early this morning. I thought it was a wave.'

Ralph was incredulous but excited. 'That's no wave. It's a boat all right.' He stared unblinkingly at the distant shape. 'It must have got caught on the coral. We have to get out there.'

Johnny was dubious. 'But you'd drown, Ralph. It's miles away.'

Ralph was charged by adventure. 'Nonsense! It's a mile, if that.' He remembered swimming in a lake in Dartmoor, and instinctively raised his hands to unbutton his shirt – but he was a savage now, forever in greasy trunks. Wordless, with his heart rising into his head, he sploshed out into the lagoon and paddled twenty feet while Johnny and Percival watched dumbly from the scorching sand.

The water was luke, heavy, surprisingly choppy; waves beat with violence around the boy's ears as he swam. He changed his technique to a front crawl and moved with determination, then stopped abruptly to evaluate his gain. The coral was thrillingly near; looking back Ralph was shocked at how far away the beach was. Percival and Johnny were distant spots of anxiety.

Still buoyed by excitement, Ralph resumed his confident crawl and soon reached the froth of the coral. The ridge was a shout of white, a warning from the ocean. The stationary wave was indeed a boat: a small staggered sloop, painted white with a blue stripe on the hull. Its stern was tucked into the sea, and constantly showered by spray; the bow pointed up into the sky.

The content of this vessel was a mystery. Ralph became pragmatic: if there was nobody inside at least there might be provisions. Excited by thoughts of chocolate and lemonade – a picnic on the beach? – he swam up to the exposed belly and put his hands on the splintered wood. The boat had no visible damage, and its mast was intact, but the two sails had been ripped and drenched by a gale. Ralph remembered the storm from two nights before. The sloop must have been battered about on the open sea before the coral caught it.

With the close tug of shallow water at his feet, the boy swam around to the starboard side, put his hands on the edge of the hull, and hauled himself up. The boat had a small cabin with a slim window on either side. Ralph inched leftward and peered in.

At first the interior was gloomed by outer blares of sun, but then he made out the unmistakeable contours of a supine human. Around it was fallout from the storm: water lapped at the entrance and containers and sheets littered the floor. Ralph saw electronic equipment and boxes. Frightened by the motionless body but pained by hunger, he hoisted himself into the boat then rested against the gunwale. The motor behind him was dead, flapped in the water.

Ralph looked into the cabin. The body was lying in an S against the wall, propped up furtherly by domestic debris, and raincoated by a navy smocksy garment. It was a young woman – the watcher saw auburn hair tied back with a bow.

After weeks of delinquence and clandestine men, Ralph's heart dissolved in joy; he pushed himself up to the cabin entrance and put a hand on the unconscious arm. With a twinge he saw a patch of crusty blood on the hair, but it seemed to be a minor wound. The face was young, symmetrical, pained.

With a pang of tenderness Ralph shook the figure gently, and asked 'Are you alright?' The woman responded quickly, as if she had been asleep rather than concussed. Two eyes, naturally serene, opened and saw the interior wreckage, then the head shifted rightwards and up to find a young face expectant and sunburnt. The globes refracted this confusion, then blinked.

'Who are you? Where am I?'

Faintly foreign, her voice had a mellow quality that reminded Ralph of the word 'detailed'. He smiled at her and she relaxed a little.

'I'm Ralph,' he informed, retracting his hand shyly and scratching his wave-plastered head. 'We're near an island… somewhere. I don't know the exact location.'

The woman sat up with difficulty, and a small shower of culinary objects followed her into the lapping water. Ralph helped her to a sitting position. The woman stared beyond the boat to the open sea. Big blue waves rocked gently the craft. Then she stood and craned over the cabin roof to look at the distant shore.

'You swam all this way? How brave!'

Ralph blushed and looked at the sea. 'To be honest I didn't know anyone was inside. I was thinking about food, you see.'

The woman surveyed the boy's emaciation, stern but kindly. 'You look like you haven't eaten in weeks,' she said.

Ralph perked up, as if reassuring his mother. 'Oh no, we've been fine,' he said lightly. 'There's nuts, and berries, and spring water.'

The woman nodded receptively. 'How many of you are there?'

'Only a few,' said Ralph, looking back at the sea, still cradling a curious distrust of adults from his nightime encounter. 'Do you think you can swim to the shore?'

The woman leant against the rooftop and examined the remains of her cargo. 'Probably,' she said. 'But if you're short on rations we should bring some of this with us.'

'How?'

'Well,' began the woman, suddenly focussed, 'we could tie a rope around a box of provisions then float it behind us. This one's watertight.' She picked up a dripping tin container, then opened smaller ones to reveal shining packages of food.

Ralph's mouth watered instantly and his stomach rumbled. Logotype blinked silver in the sun. He saw sardines, biscuits, tomatoes. The woman saw his hunger and handed him a bar of new chocolate. 'Here.'

Wordless, grateful beyond language, the boy tore open the foil and devoured the dark, metallic confection. His tongue burned with new sensations, his mouth was a sea of saliva. 'This is incredible…'

The woman watched him with a smile, then after he had finished became more serious: 'Let's get started,' she said with an encouraging pat. The task was begun by filling the tin box with as many packages as they could; after five minutes of cramming the container was full, and the woman tied a rope around it to keep it shut, then knotted it through the handle. Ralph lifted it over the side of the boat and lowered it into the ocean, where it bobbed jigfully and stayed afloat. Buzzing from the chocolate, he jumped in himself and tied the rope around his stomach. 'Will you follow me?'

'I'll prepare the next one,' said the woman, so Ralph began the slow, arduous crawl towards the azure. The box tugged at his tummy and he had to rest thrice, but eventually he was nearing the shoreline. The two littluns greeted him with wild enthusiasm, delighted to find a boxful of food to excite over. The older boy gave them a chocolate bar to share. 'Now don't eat any more than that,' he said with an admonishing finger. 'We'll have to make plans about how to share it with the others.' The younger boys ate like savages. Ralph looked back at the coral and saw the woman at the halfway point; he swam out to meet her and assist with the weight.

Finally the two swimmers and their flotsam were ashore, and the littluns were again amazed – this woman was the first female they had seen since their mothers, weeks if not months before. They sat shyly a way off, licking their chops as the woman caught her breath, but Ralph sat nearer, and as his pants relented he looked afresh at the latest visitor.

Her countenance was strong, distinctive: opal eyes, sturdy chin, rotund nose, and a mauve pout that suggested a willful intelligence. Frizzled by seawater, chocolate hair fell over her forehead and teased around her neck where it wasn't tied. Around five and six, she was dressed in robust sailing clothes, but underneath she was demure: a scarlet pullover and a half-hidden necklace. Her feet were pinked raw from the elements; she had taken off her boots to swim to the beach.

She ran a hand through the white powder and returned Ralph's stare with a friendly smile. 'Just you three?'

'Well, I think there are a few others about…' stammered Ralph with a grimace. He wondered how they would share their load with the others now that Jack thought he was dead – feeding them would mean giving up his freedom to roam the island. Or would the woman be strong enough to unite the hunters? Perhaps Roger's ignorance of Jack's intentions could be used in Ralph's favour…

The woman asked them for their names and they told her. She was called Rachel, she was a school teacher on another island many miles away. Travelling to the mainland two nights before, she had been caught in a storm and knocked unconscious before nearly capsizing on the coral. She had been unaware of the island until Ralph had woken her. Now she tentatively touched the browning blood on her head as she looked at the children before her. 'What's your story?'

So Ralph told her of the plane crash, the survivors, the divisions, the hunts – but left out the deaths, the duel, the strange man on the mountain. The woman listened in amazement. 'You've done well to keep yourself alive,' she complemented, but Ralph's heart murmured sorrow. If only she knew…

He got to his feet, keen to move. 'I'll show you where the spring is.' The four trotted past the palms and into the forest, where water bubbled invitingly; the woman knelt down and drank, then bathed her face and arms in the sparkling transparence. The boys did likewise, and refreshed they returned to the beach.

The afternoon was established. Ralph remembered the hunters, felt vulnerable again. 'There's something you should know,' he shied with a groundstare, then told the woman of Jack's psychosis and consequent imperatives, still omitting the messiahs and the duel.

Rachel was grave. 'And you're sure there's no way of making friends again?'

The boy was a clumsy acrobat with words. 'I was banished. I mean, I _want_ to be out here, with these two, but…'

The young woman nodded, unconvinced but unhurrying. The three kids before her looked younger than they inwardly felt. 'Well, perhaps I should look for them, tell them I've brought food.'

'No,' snapped Ralph, thinking of the feral hunters, who would sooner take Rachel hostage than treat her as a curious queen. 'I've got an idea. Leave it to me.' And he got to his feet and walked off, turning once to make sure the other three were not following.

THE BOY APPROACHED the thicket. Through stark branches overhead he could glimpse Castle Rock. This afternoon the mount was guarded by Sam and Eric, so Ralph assumed that the others were out hunting. He wanted to find Roger, alone. Uncertain and anxious, he turned back into the forest and found the start of the pig run, then stayed between parallel trees until he heard the snapping of twigs and saw slivers of painted bodies. Their spears looked like walking trees. The clean blond squatted, close to the hunt; another figure walked past five metres away and Ralph hoped he would not be mistaken for an animal. He could feel the old sweaty energy of this ancient process: honed by the hunters, still appealing to the crouching outcast. At least he had _his own death_ on his side. He was the one thing the hunters wouldn't expect…

Someone shouted in the distance, then came a flurry of leaves under hard feet. A sow rushed past where Ralph was hiding and frightened him; he froze as an anonymous hunter dashed in pursuit. Another followed, then another farther away. The forest was quiet again. Ralph looked past trees and ferns – and he saw Roger, spear in hand, unmistakable. Thoughtless and rash, Ralph bolted from behind his tree and ran up to the astonished hunter.

'Roger! Jack gave me his knife so I could kill you.'

The deputy was bewildered, then his instinct for violence kicked in and he leveled his spear at Ralph. 'Bollocks,' he said viciously.

'It's true. When I got to the beach a hunter followed me and gave me the knife. Do you actually think Jack would lose it by himself?'

Roger was pensive, torn. He stayed still, allowing Ralph to drive home his point.

'He likes me and he hates you!'

Another shout from the distance. Ralph looked behind him and saw several slivers approaching. He leapt behind a tree and looked at Roger. 'Well?' he hissed.

Roger remained perplexed and stationary, then he found Ralph's eyes and gave a shallow nod.

The figures were nearing. 'Distract them!' yearned Ralph, and the deputy did as he was told. He went off, dazed, and gathered the shadows together. The hunt was over.

After a few minutes the forest was quiet again, so Ralph dashed back to the beach, leaping onto the sand in his momentum and startling the waiting trio. They had formed a triangle around the pile of provisions.

'Any news?' asked the latest innocent.

'Hide the stuff,' said Ralph, curt and organised. 'I did what I could. Now we wait.'


	7. Fallen

CHAPTER SEVEN

_Fallen_

THE BOXES WERE hidden in a natural larder made by the stream; Rachel concealed them further with ferns then returned to the beach, where Ralph was pacing, nervouserious. His plans were always so arbitrary and instinctive – now there was an adult on the island he felt even more sensitive about his role as sole moral arbiter.

He stopped walking and looked at the woman. She radiated a sisterly calm, but it was an equanimity born from adult pragmatism; Ralph could see that she expected to be rescued soon. To him the island was a blind spot to the world: they would _never_ be found. Jack's evil was a cloak of invisibility.

Rachel was looking back at the glazed boy in his filthy shorts. 'How long _have_ you been here?' she asked, and Ralph was perversely pleased to hear traces of disquiet in her voice.

'A while,' he said indulgently, then snapped out of his abjection. 'Weeks. Possibly months.' Back to the zig-zagging apathy. 'If no one has found us why should they rescue _you_?'

Rachel was brushing sand from her skirt. She paused and examined Ralph's hardening countenance. 'I don't know how far you've come, but I've only travelled from another island,' she said, in a doubtful yet reasonable tone. 'If I can get the radio to work we could call for help.'

'If it isn't broken. And if we aren't too far away.' Ralph was pessimistic from a season of moral and physical degradation, but perhaps his cynicism was a way of protecting himself from future disappointments. He sat down, exhausted. 'How long were you adrift?'

The woman considered. 'About a day. I left my island and ran into a storm almost immediately. The weird thing is the forecast said the complete opposite.'

'What's your island called?'

'Bora Bora,' said the woman. 'I was travelling to Tahiti when the storm broke. I teach French there.'

Ralph was not sure if he had heard of the names. 'So I suppose we're somewhere near? Where's Tahiti?'

'The southern Pacific Ocean,' teached Rachel. '_Un territoire d'outre-mer_.' Her pupil nodded blankly. 'I suppose you don't know what day it is.' He shook his head. 'Well, I left Bora Bora on the tenth of July, a Saturday, so I suppose it's Monday now.'

Inwardly the days of the week seemed ludicrous to the boy, like a frivolous poem or the arbitrary alphabet. Nature could not be named. Suddenly he felt strangely protective of his island. 'What do you think this one is called?'

'No idea,' said Rachel. 'It's too small to be Moorea, too big to be Mehetia. Maiao is an island formation. Tetiaroa is an atoll…' She shrugged with a sigh. 'I must have drifted farther than I thought.'

In Ralph's mind the _island_ was adrift, like Laputa: it had a mind of its own, it was capricious, there were demons in its base pulling levers. He wanted to sink into the sand, to uncover them, admonish them, punish. He lay down on the beach as Rachel continued to look at him.

THE HUNTERS HAD failed: there was not enough meat to go round. As the afternoon grew dim Jack's entire tribe congregated on the summit of Castle Rock, and the Chief paced amongst them, outraged but unable to blame anyone else, for the animal had been within his grasp.

Roger was the last to reach the crest, his growing depression visible even through the paint mask. Jack ordered some of the hunters to cook what little flesh they had left, and directed the others to gather fruit and coconutfuls of water. The lines of industry were wordlessly resumed, but now the hunters were obeying the routine itself more than their leader; the regularity was keeping them sane.

Jack threw down his spear and sat on a rock by the black ashes. His mind was the island, it was the chine of rock, and his beachy horizon was hidden by a forest of confusion… He looked up to see Roger staring down at him from the other side of the fire. 'What.'

'Why did you do it, Chief?' asked Roger. Jack parted his lips to speak but his deputy was impatient: 'Why did you give Ralph your knife?' For the first time his voice was small and passive.

Jack hesitated, and the silence between them said everything. He last-ditched: 'Ralph stole it, he stole the knife…'

Roger had wanted Jack to believe Ralph was dead because that was what he thought he had wanted – now he sustained the delusion to punish the Chief. 'Before he died he told me about it.'

Jack stared hard at the ashes. Until Roger had returned that afternoon this was a showdown he thought he had avoided. If his deputy had killed a strong boy armed with a knife, what chance did he have? Pigs and humans were not the same.

Roger's psychosis was mingling with the heartbreak, and suddenly it became ascendant. 'He screamed when he died,' he growled, his hazel eyes blank and dying. 'He begged me to spare him…'

Jack shot to his feet and kicked a cloud of ash at Roger. 'Shut up!' he cried. 'That's exactly why I gave Ralph the knife, to get rid of you!' He grew rabid, fiery-eyed. 'You're mad, Roger. The sooner you're dead the better.'

'You're one to talk,' steeled Roger, and he produced the rusting knife from a pocket. 'How would you like to die by your own sword?' He pulled the blade out and waved it in front of him.

Jack picked up his spear.

PERCIVAL AND JOHNNY slept on replenished beds of fern as evening fell; on the beach Ralph lay with Rachel and gazed up at the smiling stars. The woman said they were beautiful, but the boy thought nothing was beautiful anymore.

Rachel sat up and hugged her knees. She was barefoot and skirted, and had less experience of cold evenings than her half naked companion. 'Where are the others, anyway?' she asked, and Ralph jogged his head to the easterly side of the island. Rachel followed his nod – and saw two figures slowly walking nearer. She prodded the apathetic Ralph and he looked too.

'Sam and Eric!' he said, roused and delighted. He got to his feet and met the twins in the centre of the beach; they were unarmed and devoid of hostility. 'What made you come back?'

'The hunters have broken up,' said Sam, simply.

'Scattered,' said Eric, nodding.

'We thought we'd join up with you, Ralph…'

'…if that's alright with you.'

Ralph slapped them both on their bare backs, and they returned to the poolside powder together. The twins stopped in astonishment when they saw the casual, reclining Rachel.

'Who's…'

'…_that_?'

Ralph enjoyed their amazement. 'Sam, Eric, meet Rachel. Rachel…'

The three shook hands solemnly.

'Any more to come?' asked Ralph, and his query was answered by more shapes in the distance. It was a gaggle of moaning littluns, always less animated than the twins but still sufficiently sentient to complain of malnutrition. They echoed the twins' amazement, and the pattern was repeated with each new group that arrived. Rachel was puzzled by the multitude that gathered around the original three. There must be over thirty of these kids…

Ralph stood near the palms, his plan bearing fruit. He observed that the younger children were the first to arrive; after a break in the flow Henry followed, then Robert – and to Ralph's surprise Bill and Maurice appeared at the end of the beach. The older, the more corrupted. Now almost all were without spears.

The tribe had reconvened in their original location, as if Rachel was a magnet for civilisation. Only two members were absent: Jack and Roger.

'Where are they?' Ralph asked of Sam, who shrugged and mumbled, 'Still fighting, I suppose.' The fair-headed one gazed down the beach and wondered who the winner of _this_ duel would be.

He turned to Rachel. 'I have to go back for the others. It's best if we all stay together.'

By now Rachel was visibly concerned, for the sight of the filthy crew had brought home the gravity of their circumstance. 'Sure you don't want me to come?'

Ralph nodded with a reassuring simper, then left the murmuring, happier crowd to return to Castle Rock – hopefully for the last time. He passed the ocean and the hunters' fire then entered the wood, creeping through the darkness before halting at the neck of rock. The hunters' home looked barren and empty; Ralph crossed the isthmus and climbed up to the first ridge. He peered over and saw the entrance to the cave. Like a panther, an assassin, he padded over the sheet and looked inside.

Roger was sat at the back, slumped over his knees, the penknife dangling from a hand. Breathlessly Ralph walked over to him. 'Are you coming?'

The killer remained foetal.

'Where's Jack? Have you killed him?'

Still the boy was silent. Impatiently Ralph bent down and shook Roger by the shoulders. 'Answer me!'

'He's on the summit. Now leave me alone.'

'Listen, Roger,' said Ralph. 'We have a visitor on the beach. It's a woman. She's brought food with her.'

A sole beam of hope shone through Roger's depression; he looked up into the other boy's face. Ralph could see he was still debilitated from his disappointment – as well as the fight he had presumably just effected – so he gave him an encouraging shake then left the cave to climb to the top of the castle.

There was Jack, sitting on his rock by the fire. Ralph crouched by the edge of the summit and surveyed his body. The Chief did not appear to be bruised or bleeding, but his face was drained and rigid. He too was spearless.

Ralph walked up to him and stood where Roger had that afternoon.

'There's a woman on the island,' he stated boldly. 'She's got food for us. The hunters are all on the beach now.' Dramatic pause. 'You can join us if you want to.'

The Chief continued to stare into the dead fire, and Ralph wondered how far his pride would eat into his hunger. Relinquishing his tribe would be incredibly hard for him. Would Jack stay here forever?

Ralph made a circle in the ashes with his foot. 'I can bring you food, if you like.'

Jack stirred from his reverie and looked up at the spectre. 'Leave me alone, ghost,' he said under his breath. 'I'm trying to think.'

The fair-headed one walked through the fire and sat down at the Chief's feet. Jack had been reduced to a tribe of one – now he was a lord of flies himself, and little else. 'Did Roger tell you I'm alive?' Ralph asked, puzzled, and Jack frowned, then squinted at him.

'_Ralph_?' he said, disbelievingly.

The ghost nodded at him, and smiled as much as it could – then the barrier broke, Jack's eyes widened, he smiled, he threw his arms around Ralph's neck, and the tears ran down his cheeks. Ralph was surprised, and a little touched; he gave Jack a gruff pat on the shoulder. Around them the island was more sympathetic: the wind receded respectfully, the ocean paused, nature was curious to see the first tears of this fallen warrior. Then a gust brought Jack back to his senses; he became embarrassed at this show of vulnerability, and retracted his limbs to a frigid armfold. 'Sorry about that,' he said to the ground.

Ralph cleared his throat and said, 'Think nothing of it.' He held out a hand, and after an affected hesitation Jack took it. The two boys walked slowly back to the beach.


	8. Detritus

CHAPTER EIGHT

_Detritus_

JACK HAD TO give up his tribe, but Roger had to give up Jack, so Ralph was not surprised when the deputy stayed on Castle Rock the first night Rachel spent on the island. He and the former Chief returned to the group on the beach to find the woman distributing the contents of one of the boxes to the eager children.

'Thank goodness I was delivering this to the island,' she said to Ralph when he sat down beside her. The boy accepted a tin of silver sardines, which he shared with her and Jack. The fish was salty, sweet and delicious. This irregular meal was extended with canned tomatoes, shortbread biscuits, and in the absence of any bottles from the boat, a few coconut shells of spring water. After the feast the children lazed on the beach, tired but satisfied.

Jack sat silently a little way off from the group, and Ralph did not speak to him, allowing the relegation to sink in. The fair-headed one and the woman were the _de facto_ leaders now: they both sat higher up on the beach, near the platform, while the younger children and demoted older ones reclined in a circle before them.

Ralph peered into the tin box. Half the food had been devoured, so he shut it with a bang and walked back to the spring, where he again concealed it in the hollow concave left by the running water. He was satiated from the meal but still sober about their chances of being rescued. The boat and its remaining contents were surely their best bet. And if the radio and motor did not work, what then?

The children and Rachel were making fern beds when he returned. It would be another night of hard earth and coastal wind, but at least now everyone was together and sedate. Ralph lay down beside Rachel. Her clothes were still damp from the morning swim, but she was too modest to take them off. Almost immediately the entire group fell asleep.

IN THE MORNING the littluns grumbled about breakfast, so after a discussion with the only adult Ralph let them have a meagre meal of fish and tinned beans. The first box was now dangerously close to being empty.

He looked at Rachel as she daubed a kid's grazed knee with a wet strip of fabric. 'Where are you from?' he asked.

'England, originally,' she said, 'but I moved to Australia when I was twelve.'

That accounts for her accent, Ralph thought. 'I moved to the Pacific when I was twelve,' he said in a rueful voice, and Rachel laughed.

'We won't be here forever,' she said, spreading her soothing nature thickly. 'Fancy another swim today?'

Ralph was full of nervous energy and nodded emphatically. He went up to Jack, who was sitting beneath a palm tree and licking fish oil from his grubby digits. 'Coming?' he asked, and Jack gave a melancholic but appreciative nod.

This morning the sun was coy but still provided a respectable amount of heat. The two boys waited for Rachel to finish her nursery, then waded into the lagoon when she approached the waterline; the young woman tied her hair back and joined the sogging crawl to the coral. The boat was still there, jutting patiently in the froth, and they heaved themselves into it one by one. In the night the angle of the craft had become more severe, and most of the small cabin was now full of water. Ralph noted its ironic name: the _Arrow_.

The owner perused the scattered contents. 'Some of my stuff has been washed out to sea,' she observed. A blue tarpaulin, various domestic instruments, and a third box of victuals were all that remained. She touched the controls of the radio equipment but received nothing but crackles. 'There's no way to get this onshore without soaking it, unless we can get the boat off the coral.'

The task was impossible. For one thing the waves crashing over the ridge were furious; for another the boat was surely too heavy to unhitch. Rachel unwound a rope from her waist and repeated the process from the previous day, stuffing the motley objects into one container before wrapping it in the tarpaulin, then the three swam back to the beach with the box bobbing violently between them. The crowd of children on the sand looked like displaced refugees, but at least they were now comparatively well fed.

Ralph and Rachel lugged the box to the stream while Jack sat down morosely. The couple returned, then stopped dead when they heard a far-off sound.

'The conch!' said Ralph, recalling the piercing sound from his first day as captive. 'Must be Roger…'

Sure enough the deputy was trudging towards them from the desolate side of the beach, clutching the hollow shell to his chest just as Piggy had done. Like Jack his countenance was lugubrious, but traces of nervous hope flecked his features. The red-haired boy disappeared into the forest as his deputy approached Ralph and Rachel.

'A gift,' he said pithily, and handed the conch to the boy. Ralph fingered it in refracted nostalgia, as Roger sat down and picked at the remains of the morning meal while stealing shy glances at Rachel.

Jack had diffused into the forest, and Rachel, by nature gentle and diplomatic, got up to go after him, but Ralph met her by the palms and dissuaded her.

'He's been through a lot,' he murmured, staring in the direction the other boy had gone. He inhaled deeply and looked squarely at the woman. 'Want to see something weird?'

She nodded dubiously and he took off through the dense asparagus; ten minutes later the trees gave way and there was the shimmering clearing. Rachel's heart fizzed with adrenalin as she laid her eyes on the disembodied head for the first time. 'What on Earth…'

'That's Jack in a nutshell,' said its morbid curator. He waved a hand at the rotting face. '_That's_ why I didn't join the others.'

Rachel breathed in her disturbance, then exhaled it. 'Well, at least none of _you_ got hurt.'

This innocence, this optimism was heartbreaking to Ralph. A tidal sorrow welled within him as he stared with renewed distress at the Lord. 'Please don't say things like that…'

Rachel could feel the anguish pulsing from his body. 'There's something you're leaving out, isn't there.' She touched the boy's shoulder with a warm, compassionate hand, but he flinched it away, walked closer to his morose guardian, and stroked the dried blood on its nose.

'I can't tell you about it. Please don't ask. _Please_.' Tears were brimming behind his blue eyes, and he fought to control them. _Boys don't cry_.

Rachel now had more questions than ever, but to ask them would clearly be painful for the boy. She gazed at him with genuine pity. 'You look so tired for one so young,' she said softly, then, unsure how to change the subject, she walked away quietly and left him alone in the clearing, a statue carved by invisible natives: frozen, and resting a hand on the head.

JACK STARED INTO the stream but there was no reflection. Perhaps it was just as well, for he had never really liked his freckled, impudent face. Happy and eternal, the water gurgled invitingly down to the pool on the beach, but the boy sought obscurity and took off in the other direction. The rivulet was bedded by silver stones, some rendered golden by the water, others lost to a milky diffusion, while verdant ferns awned over the mossy rocks at its edge; after a time this vegetation grew too dense to walk alongside it, and the stream soon disappeared underground.

Aimless yet occupied, Jack continued walking towards the island spine, and presently encountered the jutting hill on which Ralph and Roger had clashed. At the foot he espied what he thought was a snake in the grass, and realised it was a spear; warily he approached it and recognised the knife marks left in it by his deputy. In the indifferent sunshine the weapon seemed pathetic – violence had lost its appeal.

Suddenly depressed, he walked back towards the beach and stopped at the stream again. Rachel was there, bathing her feet. She was skirtless. Feeling a subtle pang in his chest, Jack sidestepped behind a tree to watch the woman. Though a little too young to feel compelling concupiscence, female beauty still called to him through the impending years of transition. Now granted a rare opportunity for voyeurism, he ran his eyes from the smooth thighs to the curved spine, and over the clothed shoulders as Rachel dipped her hair in the flowing liquid.

In an emergent, enigmatic way he was attracted to this vulnerable pose, and fell to fantasising – of the unseen woman Mowgli grew up to marry – and Jane, about to be pounced on by tigers – and the paintings by Daniel Ridgway Knight that his schoolmaster loved so much: the peasant women in pallid bucolias, humble yet erotic; the boat, the picnic, the distant dreaming spire; the frills of flowers, and horizons that never touched the sky, but were always overlined by olive trees and olio meadows…

How Jack longed to see a steeple in _his_ distance.

THE BOY WITH red hair was still absent when Ralph returned to a bustling scene on the beach. Now the hunters were gatherers, neutered but eager to scoop for ferns and branches under Rachel's direction. The boy stopped by the palms and looked at her admiringly; he could tell she was a teacher. What a school trip this was…

Henry, Sam and Eric spread the tarpaulin out then whipped it over a rudimentary bower – at once they could see that it would provide shelter from the persistent coastal currents, and indulgently stopped their work to enjoy this refuge.

Rachel sat down by the platform, exhausted, and Ralph joined her, appreciative of her prior compassion. 'There's something else I _can_ tell you,' he sidled, his furtive tone arousing the woman's interest. 'There are others here besides us.' Rachel looked at him in surprise, so he went on. 'A few nights ago I saw someone on the other side of the island. A man. I tried to talk to him but he told me to go back to the hunters.' He deduced as though for the first time: 'Either he's up to something and doesn't want to be interrupted, or he has plans that actually involve us.'

Rachel was perturbed. 'If there's something else you should mention, now is the time,' she sterned, but Ralph was insistent. Piggy and Simon were ghosts now. Though the thought of the grave still persisted…

'I tell you there's a _man_ here, possibly two. I don't know any more than that.'

The littluns yelled playfully under their cobalt cover.

Rachel stretched her back. 'Smells fishy,' she said. 'Perhaps this island is private property and they think you're trespassing?'

'Or they shot down our plane,' said Ralph, abject and paranoid. His whole countenance was furrowed by tiered superstition. 'I'm going to go back there tonight. Will you come with me?'

Rachel considered her boat, its radio, the emaciation around her. Unlike Ralph, she thought that other adults were potentially on her wavelength. 'Alright,' she said. 'We'll go tonight.'

Relaxed and resolved, the boy lay down in the sand, and watched the younger ones frolicking by the bower in the tepid afternoon light.


	9. Camera

CHAPTER NINE

_Camera_

JACK AND ROGER were uninterested by Ralph and Rachel's surreptitious behaviour that afternoon: they lay in apathy on different sides of the beach, and no dissuasions were necessary. After a light supper the new chiefs left Samneric in charge of the group and walked into the forest.

The daylight was faltering now, and the trees around them grew colourless as evening advanced. Eventually they reached the foot of the hill and Ralph stopped. 'The opening's up there,' he nodded, not a little nervous. 'It's a steep climb but we should manage it.'

The two set off up the winding track, and when it ended took to the shafts of rock that pointed to the summit, using tufts of vegetation as handholds. Finally they were at the top, where the dense forest resumed almost immediately. Recalling the location of his nightime encounter, Ralph entered the wood, and Rachel followed, impressed by the boy's bravado, for the trees were sombre and silent all around.

Presently Ralph descried the clearing, and stopped by the same tree behind which he had hidden from the mysterious man. He turned to the woman. 'It's over there somewhere. In the ground.'

The boy was about to set off when a familiar sound returned: the slow, brutal scrape of metal on metal. He clutched Rachel by the arm and they ducked behind the tree, their hearts frozen. After a few seconds the sound of footsteps trickled through the trees.

'See?' hissed Ralph to the wide-eyed woman. 'He's obviously up to no good.'

'Don't jump to conclusions,' Rachel whispered back. 'We're the uninvited ones, remember.'

They watched the figure walk about then stop a little way off from the clearing. An orange spark told the spies that he was lighting a cigarette. Ralph remembered the scene of the grave with an inner shudder, and held his breath as the man exhaled and moonlight illuminated the clouds of white smoke. After a few drags the man resumed his evening stroll – and in a flash Ralph decided to take his chance: wordlessly he darted away from the tree and made for the clearing.

Rachel called after him in a fright, but her protestation was lost to the rustling trees as well as Ralph's rash boldness. The boy ran silently to the bordering trunks then stopped abruptly.

The metal plate was open. A circle of warm yellow light shone up into the evening air, and insects flying about in its beam were as entranced as he was. After so many weeks of dichotomous days – scorching sun and barren nights – Ralph was delighted to see light emitting from a man-made construct. He crept to the opening and peered down.

This was the passage from his dream. A concrete wall with a ladder was directly below him, and eight feet down lay a slate-coloured floor. A lightbulb shone from the ceiling nearby, but otherwise the room looked empty.

Madly, as if his father would be waiting for him inside, the boy lowered his feet into the opening and felt about for the ladder, then climbed halfway down and looked about him. Two black wooden doors were closed on opposite sides of the room. Everything else was grey stone and metal. After an eternity of jagged rock this ordered geometry was thrillingly alien. How long had this room been here?

Ralph climbed down the ladder and stood on the cold stone floor. For the first time in weeks he felt as disheveled as he looked, like a beggar in a palace. He hoped the king would receive him kindly…

Above him, ten metres away in the black evening chill, Rachel admonished herself for not following the boy. His fearlessness always threw her: it was as if he owned the island. Her thoughts were broken by the sound of the man returning, and her heart sank, but still she remained stationary, frozen behind the tree, as she watched the figure walk heavily to the opening and lower himself down. She shut her eyes as the plate closed, darkness descending on darkness.

Ralph was just debating which door to open when he heard the footsteps above him. Adrenalin smacked him in the chest and he dashed to the one facing east; it opened smoothly into an unlit room, the dimensions of which were indiscernible, though the temperature and floor were identical to the first. He shut the door silently and held his breath.

The boy heard the man climb down the ladder and pause midway to close the opening before descending to the floor. In fear he backed away from the entrance with frigid, staccato steps – but the man went through the other door and shut it with a bang.

Ralph stopped dead in the centre of the black and shut his eyes. Darkness seemed less frightening when it was produced like this. _You can't see me if I can't see you_…

He opened them again and walked forward. On the wall he located a switch and with his heart swelling he turned on the light; half expecting a roomful of sleeping ogres, he spun around with a grunt, but the place was uninhabited. In fact it resembled a storeroom, or at least a space that was used as such; the walls around him bore three or four shelves on which were placed sundry domestic items: cans, boxes, a few hardback books.

Ralph breathed out and wondered if he could escape with some of the provisions. As the man had access to such a cornucopia, and knew of the children's existence yet did not share it, he was clearly someone whom the boy could not trust. Nevertheless, he anticipated awkwardly stuffing cans into his shorts and being unable to open the hatch, so he thought better of it and returned to the first room. Anxious, excited, he put an ear to the untried door. No sound. What _was_ the man up to?

Fear trickled into Ralph's ambition, but he forced himself to be brave. He turned the metal handle.

The skeletal environment was maintained in this next room, which like the first had another black door directly opposite. A wooden table was pushed against the southerly wall, with a few browned pieces of lined paper scattered on it, and a bunk bed was bare and barren on the same side as the ladder in the first chamber.

Enveloped by mystery, Ralph dared the next door, which opened into a larger room than before. At its front, facing the beach, was a small round window, but the view was obscured by something black. This room was considerably more occupied by objects: a wide silver table beneath the window that held various electronic equipment, all dormant; a few chairs scattered nearby; and a faded blue rug on the floor, incongruous with the otherwise clinical surroundings.

The other door in this chamber was positioned on the northerly, ladder wall. Ralph crept up to it and listened again. He heard low snoring and deduced that the man was resting in a more homely room than the previous one.

He went back to the silver table and gently moved a chair out of the way. The panels of dead lights reminded him of the submarine in his dream, rendered dry and prosaic in the waking life. More browned sheets of paper littered the desk; Ralph fingered a few but nothing was written, nor, when he looked closer, imprinted from overlayed pieces.

With a jump he heard a creak from the unseen room – the man was getting out of bed. Hurriedly Ralph replaced the paper and ducked down beneath the table, quickly repositioning the chairs to conceal himself. He cowered against the cold wall and stared across the room as the man came out; large boots clumped into view and the stowaway watched as the faceless figure moved into the next room and scraped something, perhaps the bunk bed, a little way across the floor. The sound was loud and unnerving. Then the man returned, and paused inside the entrance.

At this point Ralph felt curiously untouchable, for he had been silent, quick-witted and daring. But then, to his incalculable and timeless horror, the man put his hands on his knees, stooped down, and looked directly into the boy's terrified face.

RACHEL OPENED HER eyes. The night was still there, the trees, the silence, but Ralph had been swallowed by the earth. After a deep breath she walked to the vacant clearing and crouched down by the metal circle, wondering what had become of her companion. Then she let her lids fall once more, and hoped that when she opened them again she would be back in God's own country.

RALPH WAS DRAGGED to his feet and given a brutal shake. By the pale bulb he could clearly see the man's features: a rectangular, unshaven face, grey eyes, and the ghost of a scar on the right side. The fellow's countenance was shrewd and angry.

'I thought I told you to stay with the other kids!' he hoarsed in his threatening tone.

Ralph was hardened by weeks of wild. He shot back: 'So that we can all starve to death together? I saw the storeroom here. Why don't you share it out, you brute? Maybe we'll leave you alone then.'

This speech made some sort of impression on the man. He loosened his grip on the boy's bare shoulders and put on a more pensive expression. Then he let go completely and gave him a push towards the room he had come from.

'Eat,' he prompted, and the verb was enough incentive for Ralph; he opened the door and found himself in a room far more comfortable than the others. A fridge sat in one corner – how on Earth it was powered Ralph could only guess – and a fat white mattress lay on the westerly side. A small writing desk bore documents, stationery, and, to Ralph's discomfort, an automatic pistol.

As if reading his thoughts the man pocketed it in his coat and said, 'Don't worry about that.' Then he added, 'Just be thankful I'm not a baddie.'

Ralph frowned at him, feeling patronised. 'Then what are you?'

The man leaned against the desk as his captive opened the fridge. 'I can't tell you exactly. That information is secret.'

The prisoner ran his eyes over cocoa powder, butter, chocolate. He took a bar and began devouring it. 'Like a secret agent?' he asked without sarcasm.

'Sort of.'

'What were you doing on the mountain?'

'Looking for someone,' replied the man with an arm cross. 'Another… agent landed here a few weeks ago and we haven't heard anything of him since.'

A memory knocked on the door of Ralph's brain.

'You haven't seen anything suspicious?' asked the man.

'Just you,' said Ralph, his mouth watering from the sweet.

The man shifted. 'This could be important. You're quite sure you haven't seen somebody land here?'

The memory nosed the door, and Ralph allowed himself to realise. 'The Beast…' he murmured.

The man cocked his head. '_Beast_?'

The boy remembered the night flight, the sail over the sea, and put two and two together. 'Yes,' he sobered. 'Someone landed here. A few weeks ago. We… we thought it was a monster.'

'A monster, eh? What did he say to you?'

'Nothing,' said Ralph. 'He was dead.'

The man put a hand to his forehead. 'Then where is the body?'

Ralph had stopped chewing. Ironically, the past months were rendered _more_ frightening now that he knew the origins of the Beast. 'It – _he_ – was blown out to sea, during a storm.'

The man was silent, then to Ralph's surprise he shrugged with a benign expression. 'Well, never mind. He died doing his duty.'

His accent seemed to be English, but like Rachel's it was tinged by a dialect he could not quite place. The boy put the remaining chocolate on top of the fridge and asked, 'So what's your mission?'

'There are dangerous enemies about,' graved the nameless man. 'A handful of foreign spies have had their eye on this island for a while. I'm here to put a stop to it.'

'What's so special about the island?'

'This bunker,' answered the man with a wave. 'It's used for very important work. In fact you shouldn't even know about it.'

Ralph was unsettled but tried to maintain a casual face. 'How did you get here anyway?'

'From the northerly side. The coral is too consistent to pass through. I suspected something was afoot here so I came by night. I think I know how _you_ got here.'

Ralph blinked dumbly, so the man continued: 'The same way my colleague did. Shot down.'

Ralph remembered the crashes and lurches of the plane as it shuddered downwards through the night. 'You mean an enemy fired on us?'

The man shrugged suggestively. 'Seems logical. It would explain why you haven't been rescued.'

Ralph swallowed and tried to put the events of the past weeks in a wider context. The only source of outside information was this man. And Rachel, Rachel… But why had he not asked her the most important question? _Because, because, because_…

He suddenly yearned to be back on the cool, dry earth with the woman again, and wriggled uncomfortably, feeling hot and naked before the strange man. Adrenalin had heated his limbs.

'Will you help us get off the island?' he asked.

'Of course I will,' said the man. 'But not before I've made sure the island is safe to land on. I'll arrange for a seaplane to fly you to the nearest populated island. In the meantime, help yourself to the storeroom.'

He escorted Ralph to the room in which, moments before, the boy had hidden in terror from him, and stacked about twenty tins of food into a carton. Then he balanced it on a shoulder and climbed up the ladder.

Suddenly the curtain in Ralph's head drew back, and he remembered the copper-haired man he had seen just a few feet away during his hillside vigil. 'There was one other suspicious thing…' he began. Was this his chance to be a hero?

OUTSIDE RACHEL HEARD heard the metallic scrape again, and opening her eyes she saw the handle turning quickly. Instantly she leapt up and ran behind a verduous tree, as the portal fell with a thud on the earth and a box was shoved onto the surrounding leaves. The unseen pusher retracted before Ralph's dirty blond head appeared, then the boy clambered onto the ground, the circle of light was obliterated once more, and Rachel leant her head against the bark with a deep sigh of relief.


	10. Watching

CHAPTER TEN

_Watching_

GIGGILY DIZZING, RALPH explained to Rachel how he should have known from the first glimpse. After all, the man in the woods – the first man – had had red hair, so it was only natural that he should be a force for belligerence. He was an adult echo of the Chief.

Night had fully blanketed the island by the time the boy and the woman reached the sand. There most of the hunters were asleep, safe from the tormenting mosquitos in the forest, but still irritated and frownsome from harsh coastal whips. The youngest of them huddled inside the bower. Ralph nodded at the slumbrous heap as he passed. Justice had returned.

One figure remained isolated from the party: the other redhead, sitting stationarily near the neck of rock by the pool. As Rachel slumped down by the frozen bodies of Maurice and Henry, Ralph sidled up to the gloomy water and its companion, then reached into the filthy stiff of his right short pocket. There was sufficient moonlight to produce a bouncing flash on the metal he withdrew.

Jack saw the glint and looked up as Ralph held out the penknife, relinquished by Roger after the fight on Castle Rock. He summoned enough energy to snort appreciatively, then shook his head with a new modesty.

'Keep it,' he muttered, returning his eyes to the unvaryingly hard grey sand. 'You're the Chief now, remember.'

Ralph sat down in the shadow of the rock. 'Listen,' he began, still buzzing from his discourse on the hill, 'I need your help.' So he told Jack about the hill, the entrance, the bunker, and the mission he was to spearhead the next day. The Chief watched Ralph's animated face with muted admiration, perhaps more impressed by this boundless enthusiasm than the extraordinary events in the centre of the island.

When Ralph finished the two boys looked at each other in silence, then a shy gust prompted Jack to nod his compliance. 'Alright,' he said. 'Count me in.' Together they retreated to the palmy fringe for a substantial stretch of sleep.

IN THE MORNING Ralph noted how he was never awoken by a traceable stimulus: never a piercing birdcall, or being shaken awake by Rachel, nor even the loud, stupid sunlight which pervaded the entirety of the island, either with its officious yellow radiance or the paralysing heat. He always drifted to consciousness in imperceptible time. It was summer, Ralph thought unfeelingly, all over the world. And had there been an altogether more sinister heatwave a few weeks before? He shook his head clear, and found that hair had fallen over his eyes again in rigid strips. Time for a bathe.

The boy stretched his limbs luxuriously over the hard ferns that he and Jack had groggily gathered for the night, then sat up, sensing the other one's absence. His green bed lay between two arching palm trees that provided a degree of shade from the ascendant scorch. From here he could see a paradisiacal vista of white sand, serene sea, and beaming blue doming the scene from above. He guessed the time was about nine o'clock, and wondered if Rachel had a watch.

Ralph wiped his hair away again, then zombied out onto the beach. Ten or twelve children splashed each other lazily in the shallow tier of the lagoon, and a few of the older ones floated and sat in the pool to his right. To Ralph's delight he saw Jack beyond the neck of rock, standing alone and looking into the wild edge of forest that flirted with the ocean. He pondered exploring the site of the crash, just the two of them, but Rachel appeared and asked him about the plan for the afternoon. Doubly distracted, Ralph mumbled something consoling, then changed the subject: 'Do you have any scissors?'

Rachel nodded with a smile. 'What for?'

Ralph fingered his filthy head. 'Need a haircut,' he grimaced.

Rachel fetched the shining silver blades from one of the boxes, then sat Ralph down in the shade of a palm and tentatively began to snip blond slivers from his crown.

'Don't cut off too much,' he warned her, and Rachel did not reply, in the way that women assuage without words. The boy enjoyed the stern, humorous way Rachel handled his dozy head – prodding it into position, snip; pushing it forward, snip – and the tickling of hair as it feathered down his back. Her hands had the warm, dry touch of his mother's.

He felt drowsy again, and would have loved to fall asleep with the woman attending to him, but was disappointed when Rachel told him she had finished. 'Sorry I can't offer you a mirror,' she said, standing up and pulling him with her. She gazed at the pool of elders, then prodded him towards it. Henry was swimming from the sandy slope to the rocky wall and back again; he sat on the ledge to dry when he saw the two leaders approaching. Ralph looked into the stilling water. His hair had been cut carefully yet had an uneven, spiky look. Curiously it made him appear and feel much younger. He liked it, and turned to give Rachel a brilliant smile.

TIME STOOD STILL on the island during the day. From seven or eight in the morning until the first traces of evening, the coast was drenched by beams and waves, interminable and conquering, while the evening and night were black as a panther, yet retaining the distant crashes of the sea. The ocean was time.

After his haircut Ralph had watched Rachel conversing with the smaller children by the shore, and when he was sure she was occupied, he sped past the pool, scrambled over the platform, and made for the end of the beach, nestled by the curving forest. Jack had disappeared while Ralph was busy brushing the stray hairs from his neck and head.

The boy left the warm sand and entered the cooler jungle. Somewhere ahead was the healing scar, the scene of earliest chaos, and the birthplace of the hunters. None of the children had revisited this area; as with the unseen spine of the island they all displayed a childish disinterest in the most significant places, instead preferring the luxury of sand and the fairytale Castle Rock.

Ralph struggled over a few obstinate rocks, then saw a flicker of flesh a few metres to his left; nimbly he picked his way over the thorny ground towards the figure and saw Jack examining the edge of the island. Here large black rocks defied the sea. The boy watched the Chief climb onto this miniature cliff, then to his surprise he saw him jump from the top and disappear from view. Alarmed, Ralph battled through the thick foliage to where the rocks ended, then saw with relief that they led down to a small cove of sand, divorced from the main beach, running down to the impatient water. There Jack was standing, facing the sea.

Ralph was about to call out to him in his thankfulness, but stopped himself; instead he crouched down on the black rocks and looked at the red-haired boy a few feet below him. After a hesitation Jack undid the remains of his belt, pulled down his shorts, and walked noisily into the sea. Here the ocean was kept sober by protruding rocks fifty feet out, as well as by the band of coral, which half a mile away curved closer to the island. Ralph watched Jack's bony body disappear into the shadow-dappled green of the lagoon. He felt solemnity on his face as he stared, and wondered what he was thinking. Without reaching a conclusion he surmised that this was not an unpleasant activity. Jack's head bobbed farther out to sea, then vanished beneath the waves. He was a good swimmer. Ralph tried to guess where the Chief would surface, but was out by a good four metres when the redhead suddenly appeared near one of the rocks. Jack rested against the protrusion and caught his breath. Vaguely Ralph was reminded of _den lille havfrue_…

Once more he shook his head, sleepy again from the subtle warmth of the forest and the cool coastal zephyr that infiltrated the sparse vegetation around the rocks. He had slept too long in the night beside Jack, dreamlessly for once, and he wanted to return to that neutral, appeasing state. His thoughts were broken by a call from the water.

'Coming?'

Jack had returned halfway from the protuberance and espied Ralph above him. The watcher felt a jolt of embarrassment, then converted his shame to humour with a brief smile. He climbed down the black rocks, removed his shorts, and walked slowly into the water.

Ralph wondered why he had not bathed that morning. Perhaps there was something comforting, as well as abject, about the camouflage of earth and sweat he usually wore; it was protection of a sort. After all, why clean his body when he _felt_ so unclean?

Now he let himself enjoy the icy waves around his ankles, thighs, stomach and arms, then, committed to the ocean, he launched himself fully into the swelling monster. Jack's shock of copper hair glistened from intermittent strokes of sun ten feet away. Ralph reached him and they exchanged bashful grins.

'Race you,' said Jack, before Ralph had time to catch his breath, and took off to the Lilliputian coral thirty feet away. With a groan Ralph resumed his swim, and gained on Jack, but the Chief got to the rocks first, and sat on the flattest one with a victorious laugh. Ralph slowed down to retain his dignity, and when he reached Jack he leaned against the rock by his feet. The water was warm here, baked by the resplendent sun, and mirroring the sky with a fresh cornflower blue.

Ralph looked past Jack's bruised feet to the proud arc of the coral a mile away, and when his gaze became transfixed the Chief did likewise. A slow groaning sound came to their ears: staggered wood against reef and tide. The two boys watched the wreck of Rachel's boat slowly grind and splinter against the coral, then, rising up, as if stretching towards the sun, it tipped over the coral and fell into the lagoon, leaving a trail of debris in its wake. Overnight the sloop had almost been ground in two; now the front half drifted slowly towards the shore with the remnants of the rear dragging behind it.

On the black rock Ralph and Jack spoke to each other with their eyes, then together fell back into the sea and made for the sandy inlet. Refreshed, they donned their shorts then made their way through the spiky edge of the jungle to the safety of Rachel and the beach.


	11. Obscura

CHAPTER ELEVEN

_Obscura_

THE SLOOP ROCKED slowly to the beach, and the children ran out to meet it when the wreck began to caress the pebbly froth. Rachel got her rope and tied it to various fixtures, then the company formed two lines of a pleated "V" and heaved the hull far up the beach. Once the sloop was nestling the edge of the forest the boys collapsed on the sand, and the woman clambered into the cabin to look dubiously at the splintered interior. The radio was now clearly beyond repair; to her surprise she saw creatures already beginning to make a home for themselves on and around the brine-coated panels. In her mind's eye she suddenly saw the wreck as it would be in half a century, covered by creepers, half-buried in sand, with the vitiated hull ocean-crusted by crustaceans. Nature would make it beautiful.

She sighed out her sorrow and rejoined the older children, who relinquished the boat to the more inquisitive youngsters. Already Johnny was Captain Smollett. As Rachel was a school teacher, she could now put a name to almost every face around her; she thought wistfully of the kids she had left behind on her own island, and looked about to find a replacement for each archetype. There was Jack, troubled and sullen, sitting in the shadow of the boat and picking at a barnacle. There was Percival, anxious and ill, pining for his mother even more than the others. There was Bill, staunch and inscrutable, an adult waiting to happen. Her eyes rested on Ralph, and her opinion of him was more favourable. He was handsome, and kind in a dutiful way – a little bland, even. He would grow up to be a marine biologist, or something very near to whatever he would profess to dream about. She tried to picture _him_ in half a century as well, but it was difficult. He seemed inherently boyish, all sunny hair and blemishless skin.

She saw him scan the beach for somebody, and his face showed puzzlement, then mild disturbance. The boy scrambled over to where Rachel was kneeling, and murmured, 'Roger's gone.'

The black-haired child had indeed disappeared, and whether he had faded into the night or the morning sun the wondering duo could only guess.

Rachel shrugged and said, 'I wouldn't worry about him. He knows where we are.'

Ralph turned to the forest. 'I'm _not_ worried about him. I'm worried by what he might do.' He remembered the destruction on the beach a few nights before, and pictured the sloop meeting a similar end, the children scattering in every direction, their eyes alight as the flames danced and cackled… He shook his head, and spoke before Rachel could mollify him again. He did not _want_ to be comforted. 'I think it's time we were off,' he said briskly, and calling to his cohort he commenced the operation: 'Jack!'

UNDERNEATH THE FLUORESCENT Julyshine, five boys slunk towards the rocky side of the island. Ralph and Jack led the way, with Robert, Bill and Maurice in tow; the group trundled over familiar paths and clearings, following the stream for a while before it vanished, then took to the pig run before it too petered out. The ocean now a distant growl behind them, the smell of earth and green became pervasive, and the shadows cast by the patchwork of branches high above were almost tactile. Though weapons were not deemed necessary for this adventure, Ralph retained Jack's knife and the former chief held a spear to cut through the foliage, perhaps truly trusted by his companion for the first time. The other three, while mute and neutered, were nevertheless enthused by the prospect of a journey with a definite purpose. The solemn, expectant band travelled silently through the dense forest, and halted when they reached their first landmark.

'This is the hill,' Ralph told the others, unaware that Jack had seen it the previous day. 'We have to get to the top then find a way down the other side.'

Without hesitation he set off up the crude path that wound halfway up the hill, but when he reached the place where it tapered out he remembered the narrow vista through which he had glimpsed the grave, and wondered whether to tell the others about it. On an obscure impulse he decided not to. He could not tell why. Defensively he stood on the spot from where the cross could be seen, and pretended to help the others begin the more difficult climb. Finally all five were at the top of the hill, panting at the peak of day. The proud sun beat apricot rays through the trees over and around them, dappling the myrtle ground with spots of gold and silver. Ralph wiped his soaking forehead then pressed on, powered by restless curiosity. The man in the bunker had said the other one would arrive at one of four points, and as there were five boys…

The direction Ralph had been instructed to follow turned away from the site of the underground rooms, leftward into denser vegetation. Jack swished away flying insects from his head, and asked, 'You're sure the enemy will come today?'

The word 'enemy' gave Ralph a thrill in his chest and thighs. He nodded at Jack and said, 'The man in the bunker thinks so. He's been observing his habits for about a week.'

'I still think it's odd how he never contacted us,' grimaced Jack. 'After all, who would _we_ tell? What danger are we?'

Ralph had a dogged look. 'He has to make sure it's safe before we can leave,' he reiterated. 'Anyway, if he told the group half of them would be hysterical. You saw what they were like with _imaginary_ beasts.'

'What _we_ were like,' said Jack in a small voice. Ralph was silent.

Soon the trees were so close together that the group had to travel in single file. Jack chopped at the branches viciously, then glimpsed brighter light ahead. The smell of the ocean reached his nostrils. 'I think we're almost there.' Sure enough, the forest ended suddenly, and Jack found himself a few feet away from a rocky cliff. The dark rocks tumbled chaotically down to the sea, diverging into coves and crevices, where silver waves rushed in smoothly, tempered by the encompassing coral half a mile away.

Ralph was thrilled. 'This is it! Now we have to find a safe way down, and take a cove each to keep watch over. Maurice, you stay at the top so you can run for help in case anything happens.' Maurice scowled lightly but accepted his post. Ralph had chosen him to stay in order to separate him from Bill, for to his mind they made an abject pair. Besides, Bill was the more indignant, and Ralph wanted to appease him by giving him an important role. Robert would do whatever he was told.

Feeling satisfied with his administrative power, Ralph scrambled to the edge of the cliff and picked out the best route down. The rocks were rough and weathered, and the four boys grazed their feet and hands severely as they clambered down to the natural walls that separated the inlets. Each one had a beach of sharp sand, over which the waves ran, keen and translucent. Ralph designated a cove to the other three, and selected the farthest one for himself. _Good leaders must do their share_, he thought.

Rachel had stayed behind on the beach, more out of concern for the younger children than anxiety about the trek of the older ones. Ralph had brought her watch with him; he stroked it as he sat in a cosy hollow in the rockface, consoled by its hard precision. It was a memento from a receding civilisation. Partially covered by stark shadows, from his shelf he could see a wide slice of the ocean. The time was half past eleven. Already the day felt itchingly long, and loaded with potential adventure. He hugged his knees as he stared out at the taut ridges of water that stretched for miles before him. Which if any of the five boys would spot the intruder first?

Ralph's stomach grumbled. A fly buzzed close to his ear and he flinched; it flew back to the forest, entranced. Noon came and went. The sun itself seemed tired, and unable to break through the sickly clouds that had gathered over the island and made the day seem premature and wasted. Perhaps the man would come by night? Ralph wondered if the enemy knew of the nameless man…

At the edge of the treeline above the other four, Maurice surveyed the arching ten-mile radius of ocean, and began to feel that the vast, imposing depths were rising up above his head, as if indignant at being scrutinised. This sea wanted to hide him, to obscure all transgressions. He was fleetingly amazed that so many of the children _had_ survived. Maurice's daydreams began in the sunshine and ended with the last rays; what disrupted his reflections was a low-flying bird, grey against the navy sea, seeming to hover about half a mile away. With his insoluble thoughts receding with the daylight, Maurice stiffened as he realised the distant shape was no bird. It was a boat. He stared, thrilled and breathless, then began to climb down to the rocky coves. Bill's was the nearest; Maurice leapt down to the beach, startling the watcher, and hissed, 'There's a boat out there!' He sent him off to tell Ralph, then scrambled back up the ridges at top speed to relocate the silent shape. It was much nearer now, and unequivocally man-made. Maurice was half gratified to see the sleek craft gliding through the water, even if there was menace and mystery in its presence.

Down in the last cove Ralph was surprised to see Bill arrive panting and wide-eyed with the news of Maurice's revelation. The blond boy jumped from his hollow and peered desperately into the two black halves in front of him. He heard the boat approaching before he saw it: steady wooden _swishes_ cutting through the heavy waves. 'Come on,' he said to Bill, and led him past the other coves to the incline, rousing a sheepish Robert, who had fallen asleep, on the way. The fivesome reunited and gazed down at the lagoon.

They saw a long, low canoe approaching the cove where Robert had been posted. Ralph found time to give the negligent watcher a sharp nudge in the side with his elbow, but the boy barely noticed the pain, for the inhabitants of the craft made a petrifying sight.

Five figures occupied the canoe, four with matt-black skin, each with a paddle, the fifth a white, red-headed man dressed in plain khaki, sitting behind the others near the stern. The five boys silently recognised him from Ralph's description – so the enemy _was_ near – yet this man was not the spectacle that held their gazes. It was the four dark-skinned rowers, for their naked bodies were daubed with white stripes that caught the moonlight and shone like painted snakes on a black canvas. Their limbs, chests and faces were all adorned with the zebra-like patterns, and curious hieroglyphics decorated their foreheads, each one unique: a hollow circle; a Cupidic bow; a trapezoid with a trapped sphere; a pair of devilish horns. The boys crouched like statues as they watched this otherworldly group slide into the cove; the four dark men jumped out of the canoe and pulled it far up to the dry rocks. Then the white man stood up and joined them on the sand.

Ralph sensed a primitive acuity in the dark ones, and was thankful that the coastal wind was blowing his way, for he felt sure that otherwise the group below would have smelt them out as soon as they had landed. He motioned the others to retreat into the safety of the forest, then glanced back to the cove. Already the visitors were clambering with alarming agility over the rocks towards the watchers' position, and Ralph darted away to join the others. The sight of those white streaks and symbols had filled his soul with a resounding and impenetrable foreboding.


	12. Entangled

CHAPTER TWELVE

_Entangled_

RALPH AND THE others hurtled through the undergrowth. The sun had disappeared now, and the forest was a black and prickly tangle of creepers and branches, biting and jabbing at their feet as they ran. At last they neared the clearing, and Ralph overtook the others as they slowed to a trot.

The man with the scar was waiting for them. At first they did not see him, then a trunk seemed to come to life and approach them. Panting, Ralph told him of the visitors, and the man nodded grimly, then motioned to a denser area of vegetation. The boys followed him as he pushed himself beneath a large hollow bush; once installed in their hiding place they peeked out between the trees that bordered the clearing.

They waited, cold air running over fresh sweat as they tried to quell their breathing. Presently the hisses and ticks of the jungle were joined by deliberate, unscared footfalls, and forty feet away the five boatmen appeared, an adult reprise of the boys' journey. The flame-haired man led the congregation into the clearing, one of the dark-skinned men carrying a tumble of yellow fabric. With fizzing hearts the watchers saw that two of the others held spears, thin and crudely accurate. The group halted in the centre of the glade and the white man knelt at the metal opening. The distinctive grating noise was egregious, unnerving amidst the cool, quiet trees. With the hole exposed the man swivelled his legs onto the top steps of the ladder and quickly descended, and two of the others followed.

In the black hole Ralph wondered what the adult beside him was thinking, and stole a furtive glance. The man was rigid, keen, and somehow seemed to be comprehending these events. How much did he know about the mysterious five?

Suddenly the man emitted a low but distinct whistle, then, to the boys' rising horror, one of the dark ones walked directly up to them. Ralph started, but the man with the scar held his arm.

'Don't worry. They're friends of mine.'

He ducked out of the hollow and met the man halfway. After a coarse exchange the dark one returned to the hole and descended into it, while the man with the scar stood waiting. Presently the three underground natives appeared from the bunker. The redheaded man did not emerge with them.

By now almost insane with tension, Ralph gave into an impulse and scrambled out, and the others followed pensively. The man with the scar turned and gave them a sinister simper.

'Meet my friends,' he said, and nodded to the silent quartet. Up close they were even more intimidating. Ralph noted more of the fluorescent shapes on their bodies: a scorpion; a double-tongued snake; a pyramid, all like entries in some ancient Egyptian journal. Their countenances were inscrutable.

The man with the scar fired off some directions to the natives in a foreign tongue, then gestured for the boys to follow him. The tenfold troop took off again, taking a more obscure path back to the friendlier side of the island. After five minutes the scarred man barked at them: 'You boys are more nimble than us. Go on ahead and slash the bushes with your weapons.'

Jack obediently took the lead and began swiping at the thorny brush, and the others followed. After a while the vegetation grew sparser, and Jack called back to them:

'Come on, it's easier from now on.'

Eagerly he advanced onto a flat area of leaves and grass – then suddenly the ground disappeared beneath his feet, he was falling into the middle of the Earth. With a stinging thump he landed in a tangled heap at the bottom of a deep pit, and winced as he looked around. The sides were as sheer as a cliff face.

He leapt to his feet in anger, glaring up at the square of black above them. 'Let me out of here!' he cried.

Five unresponsive faces peered down at him.

'Foolish,' said the man with the scar. 'Very foolish. Will kids believe anything these days?'

Jack was livid, and kicked the side of the hole. Soil showered over his ankles. 'You bloody savages! Let me out at once!'

'Terribly sorry,' replied the man coolly. 'I'm afraid you're going to have to make the most of it down there. _Adieu_.'

With that the five faces disappeared, and all that remained was the whispering nightlife of the forest.

Jack heard a murmur behind him: Ralph had fallen in as well. The fate of the other three boys was unknown. The supine boy brushed the ferns from the false covering off his limbs and rose to his feet.

'Robert! Bill! Maurice!'

The wildlife buzzed indifferently.

Jack looked at Ralph. 'In another pit?'

'Don't know,' he shorted, then, equally curt, 'I'm a fool.'

Jack was impatient. 'Forget it. Let's just try to get out of here.' He fell to his knees. 'Stand on my shoulders.'

Dazedly Ralph balanced a foot on one of Jack's grazed blades, then the other. With difficulty the former chief staggered to his feet, steadying himself against contiguous sides. Gingerly he reached up an arm – but he was still a foot away. The soil crumbled through his fingers when he tried to get a grip. Pain returned to his legs from the recent shock, and he half jumped, half fell from Jack's shoulders.

'We're done for,' he gasped, defeated.

Jack sunk down next to him and they both shut their eyes. A self-imposed darkness was preferable to the unending one outside. Time stopped. Nature treaded water. Outside the boys' earshot, the five devils disposed of the other boys then returned to the clearing. Ralph murmured a misremembered line from Shakespeare.

'The best of rest is sleep, and that you often provoke. Yet grossly fear'st thy death, which is no more.'

Jack did not reply. He wished the hole were deeper, that he could fall forever and evaporate in the vicious heat at the Earth's core. He wanted to die… To be death's conquest and make worms his heir.

AFTER THE BOYS had been sucked into this maelstrom, and were out of sight on their black sea bed, a lone figure circled on the surface high above them. In their dejected state his appearance would have seemed ironic if not jolting: a man with hellfire for hair, and devil-hued bruises on his face and arms. But this devil was their saviour. Hours after their earthy imprisonment – above the sea yet under the ground – this figure wandered through the forest as the blackness at last relented and the first beams of dawn crept through the trees. Finally he stopped at the pit, and looked in.

'Hello?'

Inside a dream, Ralph's parents stood at the door of their cottage in beautiful England. They were waving goodbye to him… And then suddenly they were saying hello, and gesturing to walk back down the lane. A final hug? Or a day off from school? Or would they all die together?

'Hey, you down there!'

Ralph jogged awake, then looked up. The red-headed man stared down at him, as Jack shifted to consciousness too.

'You!' cried Ralph.

The man was unfazed, and even managed a smile. 'Need a hand?' Quickly he produced a coiled rope and flung one end down to the boys. It landed on Jack's legs and he took it instinctively. Above them the man secured his end to a trunk and tested it. 'Up you come, lads,' he called.

Anything was preferable to the pit, even a higher rung of hell. Jack leapt up the sides of the hole like a monkey, and within seconds was standing next to the mysterious man, whom he had heard so much about from his fellow prisoner. Ralph followed presently. The three humans looked at each other.

'I'm Martin,' said the man in an American accent, and held out his hand.

Ralph remembered the custom as if it were ancient. 'Ralph,' he said blankly, and offered his own.

Jack introduced himself too, and the man granted them more information.

'Given everything you've been through, I'm not sure you'll believe this, but I work for the Secret Service.'

'I've heard that before,' said Ralph with neither scorn nor humour.

Martin nodded. 'I know. Old Scarface told me all about it.'

'But I thought he captured you?' said Ralph, amazed.

'He did, but not before I'd escaped. I know this island like the back of my hand, and the bunker too.' He paused, almost enjoying the dazed looks of his boyish audience. 'There is another way out, one that leads to a small platform in the cliff edge.'

'Not… Not the grave?' asked Ralph.

The man nodded. 'Exactly. No one would spend the better part of a year in that dungeon without another exit, and a more convenient one, too. After I was locked inside I headed straight for the grave, then doubled back – with this, of course.' He patted a Smith & Wesson that was holstered under an arm. 'I had to dispatch one or two of the natives before I could move on to Scarface,' he admitted.

A shiver went through the listening boys. One or two? How could he be so casual?

The man who called himself Martin read their thoughts. 'Sorry to break this to you, but there are no heroes in this game. Only sides. We have to do what's necessary.' He examined their faces keenly. Then he said, 'So do you want to know why you're here on this island?'


	13. Revelations

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

_Revelations_

THE ENEMY HAD declared war on the West. Several European cities had been hit. The administrative heart of London was eviscerated. The world had been struck by a nuclear storm. It was during this salvo of panic and confusion that the children had been evacuated. Sitting beside Jack near the gaping hole, Ralph remembered the plane standing on the tarmac of the small airport, its silver exterior flecked by foreboding rain, and recalled how much it had looked like a bomb itself.

Leaning on a tree in front of them, the American continued his summary. Almost all the evacuees had safely landed in their destinations: Australia, Canada, the United States. Heading for the former country, the boys' plane had hit a storm and veered off into prohibited territory. That was when they were struck – ironically by the very military whom they hoped would protect them. Having seen parts of the craft and its passengers washed out to sea, it was temporarily assumed that all aboard had been killed – only later was their survival gleaned, and a lone protector sent their way.

In the meantime intrigue had cloaked the island: an enemy plane was shot down, its pilot killed, but somehow another individual, perhaps a traitor, had managed to breach this secret sanctuary. That was where the man named Martin came in: he was dispatched from his post in South America to investigate these goings-on, and with some subtlety. There was a pressing urgency to the task, for the island was to be the seat of an important event.

An atomic bomb was to be dropped on an atoll five miles away, and its effects on the island examined.

Ralph and Jack listened in solemnity.

'What about us?' asked Jack.

'An unexpected proposition,' muttered the American. 'I had no idea you were here until I saw you, Ralph, near the grave. For a moment I thought you were mixed up in all this.' He paused. 'Anyway, there wasn't much for me to do except wait, so I went back to the other island.' Blank faces. 'There's another one a few miles off. Belongs to the savages. They've been taking me back and forth as I please. Until they double-crossed me, that is.'

'For the traitor,' murmured Ralph.

The man nodded. 'Must have got to them first. Last night when I returned to the bunker to lay a trap for Scarface they pounced on me, gave me a good beating.' He fingered a scarlet bruise on his chin. 'Before they'd gone back up the ladder I'd headed for the other exit. Gave 'em quite a surprise when I appeared behind 'em.' He snorted, then skipped a chapter. 'Old Scarface made one mistake. There are no secrets on this island. He got the wrong one. All the gear for the explosion is on the atoll. Just a circle of coral five miles off.'

'When will it happen?' ventured Jack.

'Soon. Real soon. I'm going to stay on and watch the explosion from the bunker. Offers a pretty good view when you move the fake trees out of the way.'

'And us?' echoed Ralph.

'Tough one. The savages can't be trusted, so we'll have to use the supply plane that's coming for me. Amphibious one.' He shook his head. 'Really thought you'd had it, you know. They were pulling bodies out of the water after the storm…'

'Why couldn't they get us off sooner?' demanded Jack.

'You weren't a priority. Couple of kids on an island. You know there's a war on, don't you?'

'We do now,' flatted Ralph. 'And there's more than a few of us here.' He frowned. 'Would you really have sent a plane for us if we hadn't met you tonight?'

'Of course. But the savages turning on me changed everything. I'd inform the base if there was a radio here. I guess the supply plane'll have to go back and forth with you. How many are there?'

'About thirty,' guessed Jack.

The man whistled. 'Well, there you are. How about showing me your camp?'

'We have to find the others first,' said Ralph. 'Robert and Bill and Maurice are around here somewhere. Are there other pits on the island?'

'Not according to Scarface,' said Martin. 'He said you'd _all_ been thrown down here.' He stared into the black forest and shrugged. 'If they are trapped they'll have to wait 'til morning. I'm not searching for them in this light.'

Reluctantly the boys agreed. Devoid and exhausted, they led the way down the raised area to the forest, and intuited through the gloom until they came out at the beach. In the distance the sun was waking, a burning orange on the crest of the horizon. Ralph introduced Rachel to Martin, then collapsed with Jack onto the cool sand. Within seconds they were dead to the world.

THE SUN ROSE for the five billionth time, and threw its white brilliance over the island. The weeks of terror and superstition had been one long night for the hunters, and this was their first morning. Now, with the prospect of the supply plane, it would also be their last.

Ralph opened his eyes and saw Rachel sitting with Martin. He took pleasure in her face and manner of speaking. Thinking back to what the American had said, he wondered if in fact they had met before. _It was only later that someone was sent to you._ Was Rachel part of his plan? Or had she been duped and directed to the island? In a way he did not really care. Her presence here had soothed him immensely, given him an incentive to continue living.

He sat up dizzily. Jack had disappeared again, no doubt fulfilling his loner tendencies. Perhaps he was at the stream. Ralph stood and joined the two adults. They were finalising their escape.

'We'll send the kids to the mainland,' Martin was saying. 'Then I'll come back and look for the other kids on the hill.'

Rachel nodded, then turned to give Ralph a smile. 'I've heard all about your adventures last night,' she said. 'Did you sleep well?'

Ralph nodded, still groggy. 'When does the plane arrive?'

'In a few hours,' said Martin. 'At noon. That gives you some time to get your things together.'

'There's not much left,' said Ralph. 'Just the things Rachel salvaged from her boat.' He nodded at the hull, which sat flabbergasted further down the beach. 'Only thing is,' he began, remembering Roger, then stopped. 'Oh, nothing. I was just wondering, how many journeys will we have to make?'

'Two, if we're lucky,' said Martin. 'The plane sits ten, but we'll get a few more in on each flight. Most of these kids are pretty small. When the plane goes back for the second group I'll stay on the mainland and tell the authorities just how much you've seen and heard, so you come on the first flight, Ralph. Don't worry, you'll all need to be debriefed.'

Ralph wandered around the beach for a while, thinking about Roger's whereabouts. Perhaps he had returned to sulk and skulk around Castle Rock. He decided to find out, and jogged off. Soon the beach ended and he entered the forest again, and eventually he faced the neck of rock that led to the old headquarters. Vividly he recalled the waves washing the red stuff away… He flinched, and crossed the neck to the Castle. The juts and ridges were as rough and rigid as ever. He clambered up and came to the platform and its cave, the scene of all those barren captive nights. Ralph peered in. It was empty, except for some rotting fruit and pig skins. Where could Roger be?

He decided to try the summit, so he climbed up and came out at the remains of the hunters' fire. Still no sign of the shamed deputy, just a single spear which sat in the ashes. Did he want to be found? Did Ralph want to find him? He wished Rachel did not know of his existence. How comforting it would be to leave him here to the fallout…

Indifferent, he trudged back to the sand, where he was met with a more animated sight: the children were united in one lively cell, looking forward to civilisation, with Rachel separating them into two groups, younger and older. No doubt the former throng would be the first to leave.

After a while he became aware of an alien sound, almost as jarring as the metal grate in the centre of the island. He looked up into the blue expanse, back down to the horizon – then he saw it. A conspicuous speck in the sky. The aeroplane was approaching! The craft cruised over the coral and into the lagoon, white waves flashing as it skidded over the water, then came to a gentle stop just yards from the watching survivors. It was a handsome blue machine, replete with floats and decals.

Martin splashed into the lake to meet the pilot, a rugged-looking man in blue overalls. He looked amazed to see the congregation on the beach.

'Time is short, Peterkin,' said Martin to the pilot. 'Let's get as many of these kids on board as we can.'

It was a boney, sunburned gang that boarded the plane. Ralph was the last to go in. Before he ducked his head into the hulk he turned and looked at Jack and Rachel. 'See you soon,' he said with a weak simper, and they smiled back. Ralph took one last look at the sand, the trees, the mountain, and arching sky, then crept into the plane. Its propellors shifted. The engines chugged. With a jolt the craft began to move out towards the ocean. This was it!


	14. Flight of the Hunters

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

_Flight of the Hunters_

THE PLANE FELT trim and sleek as it cut through the morning sky. Ralph found time to savour the clinical smell of the seats and the humming of the engines. The only reminder of the island was the salty stench of the kids around him. Suddenly Ralph felt very alone, cut off from Rachel and Jack like this. He glanced at the napes of Martin and the pilot, and wished that Rachel was in the former's place.

'How long 'til we get there?' he asked.

'About two hours,' replied Martin. 'We'll drop you off in French Polynesia. Rachel told me she came from there, funnily enough.'

Again Ralph felt superstitious impulses, but shunned them. After all, Rachel wouldn't have drifted from Crete! He settled back down into his leather seat and closed his eyes. With a littlun sitting on his feet, this stuffy flight would normally have been unbearable, but the mechanical sensations around him comforted Ralph. He yearned again for order, geometry, the unnatural.

He was just acclimatising himself to the luxuries of civilisation when a burst of bullets shattered the plane. With a violent puckering sound, like the top of a tin can being punctured, four holes appeared in either side of the fuselage, and the head of the littlun sitting on Ralph's right exploded like a water melon, sending sluices of blood and brain all over him.

A unified wail of terror rose like a siren as Ralph stared, dumbfounded, at the frayed edges of the gaping neck beside him. Then, closing his eyes again, he leaned forward and vomited onto his feet, as the other children pushed themselves away from the corpse like rats fleeing from torchlight.

'Martin… Martin…'

Ralph looked back towards the cockpit and saw the American, white and frozen, staring back at the bloody scene. He made a sudden gesture, and his lips moved, but Ralph heard nothing, just the rush of his blood combining with the faltering engines. _We can't crash again, we can't crash again…_

In the cockpit Martin was frantic. 'What the hell's going on? Are they attacking us in broad daylight now?'

Peterkin was gripped by fear. 'We… We'll have to land in the ocean,' he stammered.

'The ocean? We'll be a sitting target out there!'

'What else can we do?' blubbered Peterkin. 'We're losing fuel and going down fast. That's if we don't get shot to death first.'

Martin stared dead ahead, his eyes bulging, as if hoping an answer would hit the windscreen. After a few fraught seconds he made a decision.

'We have to go to the island.'

'The island? We'll never make it back,' cried Peterkin.

'Not that island,' said Martin, his face spectral. 'The other one. The one belonging to the savages.'

The two men looked at each other, both blinking away beads of sweat.

Martin insisted. 'Turn south-west. Now!'

Peterkin blinked again, then made the necessary manoeuvres. 'It'll be five minutes before we're in sight,' he gasped.

'We'll make it,' said Martin grimly. 'Just keep flying. Anything's better than the savages in the sky.'

The plane protested with rumbles and chugs as its course became increasingly hectic. The clouds of flight disappeared and the gigantic ocean loomed underneath them. Ralph kept his eyes shut tight. The blood and the future were too terrible to contemplate. His hearing had returned, however, and he heard Martin proclaim:

'He's coming around again! Hold on!'

Ralph stayed in a foetal position, and tried to steady his breathing.

In the cockpit Peterkin kept his eyes in front of him, while Martin strained to keep sight of the attacker.

'Single fighter,' the American muttered. 'Must have followed you.'

'I didn't bargain for this,' said Peterkin. 'Never even fired a gun in combat.'

'Hold steady,' ordered Martin. 'How much further?'

'We're coming into sight,' the pilot replied, then, 'There it is. Look!'

Martin saw a dark green dot in the distance. 'Head straight for it. Think you can land?'

'If there's a beach I can ease onto it. If not I'll land on the water and we'll swim for it.'

The island was in comforting view when another flurry of firepower hit them — one of the propellors was struck, and a tail of dark smoke made their direction clear. The enemy plane passed overhead and vanished from sight and sound. Soon the island was large and substantial within the cinema of the windscreen.

'Small beach,' said Peterkin shortly. 'I'll do my best.'

Martin nodded, then called back to the cargo. 'We're making a crash landing,' he said as calmly as he could. 'Everyone hold on tight.' He turned back to Peterkin. 'Good luck.'

RALPH OPENED HIS eyes. Green and blue, just like the island: suffocating trees and vast sky. Was he back there? No, they had left that place. This was the other island. With a start he tried to sit up, but pains in his back and sides prevented him. Martin came into view.

'Relax,' he said. 'We made it.'

'Is everyone okay?' whimpered Ralph, his voice simultaneously close and distant.

'Pretty much. Peterkin lost consciousness. The kids are alright.'

Ralph nodded as best he could. 'Radio,' he murmured. 'Call the base.'

'Radio's out,' the man informed him. 'I only hope they'll call off the bomb. If they assume I got the kids over here by boat…'

Somebody groaned nearby. It was Peterkin. Ralph turned his head and discovered he was lying in the outskirts of a forest, rather like the one on his own island. A few feet away, white sand ran down to the waterline. Peterkin was propped up against a palm tree, testing a wound on his forehead.

'I'll get some bandages,' said Martin with a reassuring pat. 'You did bring some, right?'

'Of course,' said the pilot with a grimace.

Martin went off into the forest and Ralph turned his head to follow him. Then he saw the blue body of the plane. The wings and the floats were gone. Martin disappeared into the cockpit and rummaged about for the box of stuff in the hold. Ralph remembered one of the littluns using it as a footrest. The American returned to the supine passengers and opened the container. Out came drinks, a flare gun, a box of bullets, bandages, and other sundry items. Ralph thought of Rachel's flotsam. What a happy wreck that had been.

Martin administered to Peterkin, and Ralph ventured to sit up on his elbows. He saw the other children sitting in the shade of the forest. They looked like they were holding up. Used to it by now, thought Ralph with an ironic smile.

He croaked the pressing question at Martin. 'Do they know we're here?'

'Who?'

'The savages.'

Martin played with a bandage. 'Don't know. But we made a pretty big noise when we crashed. Lucky the thing didn't explode.'

'We're going to need those bullets, aren't we,' said Ralph, his eyes as dead and dry as the sand beside him.

Martin put the bandages back in the box. 'Probably,' he admitted. 'Looks like Scarface will have his revenge.' He pursed up his lips, breathed in, breathed out, then looked Ralph dead in the eye. 'There's something I didn't tell you. About your friends. The other three boys.'

'What do you mean?'

'Scarface didn't say they were with you. He told me the other savages had taken them away.'

'Why would they do that?'

Martin paused, and ran a hand over his gun. 'Because they're cannibals.'

Ralph closed his eyes again.

THE END


End file.
